Oxford University's £185m arts centre set to open to public this month
The Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre will be the new humanities centre for the University
A new £185 million arts centre will open to the public in October, Oxford University has announced.
The Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre will be the new humanities centre for the University, located in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter on Woodstock Road.
It will become the home for the new institute for Ethics in AI, as well as nine university faculties including English, History, Music, Linguistics, Philosophy and Modern and Medieval Languages.
The building will also provide new venues for music and performing arts, including a 500-seat concert hall, a 250-seat flexible lecture and drama theatre, black box experimental performance space, a multimedia TV and sound studio, an exhibition hall, rehearsal rooms and studio spaces.
It will open on October 13 when the University’s term starts, and the programme of evets will begin in April 2026.
Lord Hague, Chancellor of the University, said the investment in the centre “represents an enormous vote of confidence in the humanities”.
He added: “The benefits of bringing together outstanding students and researchers from so many disciplines in a state-of-the-art building will be felt for generations to come.”
Stephen Schwarzman, co-founder of Blackstone who made the £185 million donation, said: “When announcing this gift in 2019, I shared my belief that the study of the Humanities and Ethics were critical to addressing some of the most fundamental questions society faced, including the impacts of AI.
“The pace of change since then has only made those questions more urgent and reinforced the importance of Oxford’s global leadership in navigating today’s dynamic world.”
The building would be accessible to the public every day between 9am and 9pm.