Arts Circle Celebration At NU

At noon and again at 3 p.m. on June 4 members of the Trisha Brown Dance Company will be dancing on multiple rooftops around Northwestern University’s Arts Circle, their classic work “Roof Piece” visually uniting the architecture of the circle and the arts across academic disciplines.

More than 150 cellists will infiltrate the campus in small groups with spontaneous mini-concerts before gathering for a massive performance on the Arts Circle lawn at 2:15 p.m.

Guests on that day also will encounter the towering “Grand Rapids Carousel,” a 40-foot-long inflatable sculpture with multiple lifelike arms and legs, by the late German artist Otto Piene.

From sunrise to sunset, as part of the Arts Circle Celebration at Northwestern, the department of art theory and practice will host artists Aaron Hughes and Amber Ginsburg’s participatory “Tea Project,” highlighting debate over extralegal detention via “Tea Performances” and “Tea Teach-Ins.”

These and other June 4 events mark a daylong celebration of Northwestern’s Arts Circle, located on the southeast portion of the Evanston campus. A full schedule of these events, event descriptions and artist biographies are available online on NU’s Arts Circle website, artscircle.northwestern.edu.

The day’s celebration will feature world-famous artists as well as students from Northwestern and more than 50 other Chicago-area and North Shore schools. A keynote panel, “Why Art Matters,” will be composed of NU faculty and alumni luminaries.  

Free parking will be available in the Segal Visitors Center Parking Garage, 1841 Sheridan Road.