University Sponsored Performance and Lectures

The Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is a major cultural destination and crossroads in the performing arts, connecting Philadelphia regional audiences and the University of Pennsylvania through exposure to innovative human expression in theatre, music and dance. Annual programming includes dramatic touring theatre, jazz, world music, culturally-specific roots programming (including African, Asian, Latin, and Irish work), and local Philadelphia artists. For 28 years, the Center has also presented Dance Celebration, one of the nation’s top dance series, in partnership with Dance Affiliates.

For those interested in modern art, the Institute for Contemporary Art is free for all to engage and connect with the art of our time in various creative, flexible exhibition spaces right on Penn’s main campus.

Few universities anywhere in the world can boast about having their own world-class museums the way Penn can. Founded in 1887, the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has conducted more than 400 archaeological and anthropological expeditions around the world. Three gallery floors feature materials from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Canaan and Israel, Mesoamerica, Asia and the ancient Mediterranean World, as well as artifacts from native peoples of the Americas and Africa. With an active exhibition schedule, Penn Museum offers the public an opportunity to share in the ongoing discovery of humankind's collective heritage.

Serving as a rich cultural resource for students, scholars and the community, the Arthur Ross Gallery presents global art and artifacts through gallery exhibitions, scholarship and educational outreach.

Founded in 1995 by a group of students, faculty, staff and alumni, the Kelly Writers House is an actual 13-room house at 3805 Locust Walk that serves as a center for writers of all kinds from Penn and the Philadelphia region at large. Each semester the Writers House hosts approximately 150 public programs and projects—poetry readings, film screenings, seminars, web magazines, lectures, dinners, radio broadcasts, workshops, art exhibits, and musical performances--and about 500 people visit the House each week.

The Morris Arboretum is a historic public garden and educational institution. It promotes an understanding of the relationship between plants, people and place through programs that integrate science, art and the humanities.

The Penn Humanities Forum is charged with taking a fresh look at ideas that touch on the human experience. Each topic is explored in a rich program of public lectures, performances, and exhibitions, as well as through faculty and student research. Actively participating in Philadelphia's civic life, we cosponsor and site programs in major cultural and historical venues around the city.

Several times each semester, Arts and Sciences faculty take a minute out of their day to share their perspectives on Locust Walk in a novel one-minute format on topics ranging from human history and the knowable universe, to fractions and fly-fishing.