Art and culture in close cooperation with research and teaching: TUM Center for Culture and Arts founded

12/1/2023

With a new TUM Center for Culture and Arts (CCA), the Technical University of Munich aims to interlink art and culture more closely with science and provide impetus for intellectual exchange across disciplinary, cultural, and generational boundaries. To this end, high-level cultural events, inspiring teaching formats, and experiments using technological innovations for entirely new art forms are planned.

Installation AIS3 [aiskju:b] by Tim Otto Roth at the University of Music and Theatre Munich 2019 made it possible to experience data from the IceCube neutrino detector at the South Pole with all the senses. It was organized by the SFB1258 Neutrinos and Dark Matter in Astro- and Particle Physics.

CCA's mission is to forge new connections between science and art, people and technology. The founding director is the conductor and TUM honorary professor Felix Mayer: "The TUM Center for Culture and Arts wants to question the latest technological developments for their significance for the arts, it wants to offer students new academic teaching formats, it wants to arouse curiosity and feed and fuel the intellectual zest for life."

TUM President Prof. Thomas F. Hofmann emphasizes: "With the TUM Center for Culture and Arts, we want to offer a wide-ranging, inspiring program, from music and literature to visual, performing, and digital arts. We want to support students, employees, alumni, partners, and friends in discovering previously hidden talents and to develop new inspiration and creativity through this combination of science and culture. We want to encourage creative ways of thinking and working and give people deeper access to less familiar fields of science through art and culture.“

The CCA is located under the umbrella of the TUM Institute for LifeLong Learning, which is headed by TUM Executive Vice President Prof. Claudia Peus: "At TUM, it is our declared goal to attract talents in all their diversity and to give them the best opportunities to develop their potential. At the same time, we want to be servants of society and shape the progress of innovation responsibly. Art and culture offer unique opportunities to appeal to and inspire the most diverse groups of people and give them impetus for further development, including people who might not normally come to university."

Diverse program

The CCA will offer an inspiring art and cultural program for all members of the TUM family and the urban communities at the university locations. This includes organizing exhibitions, concerts, and symposia in cooperation with renowned cultural institutions, as well as cultural exchange with partner universities. There are additional courses for students in literature, fine arts, music, history, politics, and philosophy. Furthermore, research findings are to be communicated in new ways through innovative projects at the interface of art and new technologies.

“Nobel Heroes” photo exhibition: Official opening Dec 11

One of the CCA's first major projects is the photo exhibition "Nobel Heroes: Nobel Laureates and their Stories" in the Matriculation Hall on the main campus of TUM in Munich city center. Since 2000, photographer Peter Badge has been taking portraits of all living Nobel Laureates in cooperation with the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings Foundation. The exhibition runs from Dec 7, 23 - Feb 18, 24. On Dec 11, 23 at 18:00, Nobel Laureate in Medicine Louis Ignarro will be a guest at the official opening. Admission is free. Register here: Official opening, Dec 11.

Further information and links

Technical University of Munich

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