Campus Events

The Penn Museum Library’s 8th annual student fieldwork photography exhibit will feature photos taken by Penn students conducting fieldwork and research across the world. Contributors include student photographers from Penn’s departments of Ancient History, Anthropology, Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World (AAMW), Classics, East Asian Languages & Civilizations (EALC), History of Art, and Middle Eastern Languages and Civilizations. Free and open to Penn students, faculty, and staff.

This exhibition continues the collaboration between ICA and New York-based textile studio Maharam, which invites artists to reimagine the windows of ICA’s façade. For the 2025-26 edition, Philadelphia-based artist Xenobia Bailey created a design that reflects her “Funktional” aesthetic and rooted in her decades-long fiber arts practice.

Part of America 250 at Penn programming, this exhibit explores the overlooked yet essential role of nurses during the American Revolution, whose vital work helped shape early American healthcare. It challenges the widespread belief that nursing began in the 19th century with Florence Nightingale by providing rare evidence of a world of nursing and caretaking that thrived before, during, and after the American Revolution. Free and open to the Penn community.

“A World in the Making: The Shakers” explores the design legacy of the Shakers, a religious group whose values of community, labor, and equality shaped their furniture, architecture, and everyday objects. Through works by contemporary artists influenced by the Shakers, alongside original Shaker-made pieces, the exhibition invites reflection on how Shaker ideals continue to inform conversations around inclusion, gender, and intentional living in the 21st century. Free and open to the public.

Part of America 250 at Penn programming, this exhibition surveys the revolutions that shook the Atlantic world in the 1790s—and the profound changes that resulted—from France to Haiti to Philadelphia. The books, documents, objects, and images on display will challenge visitors with the questions posed during that revolutionary era. Free and open to the public.

On view for the first time in the U.S., this exhibition—blending arts with archeology—features century-old watercolors documenting Egyptian tomb paintings. Created by Egyptian artist Ahmed Yousef during Penn Museum excavations in the early 1920s, these paintings vividly record elaborately decorated funerary chapels from Dra Abu el-Naga, a key burial ground of elite officials and priests during Egypt’s New Kingdom (ca. 1550–1070 BCE). Included with Museum admission.

This exhibition, on view in the Annenberg Center lobby and curated by the Arthur Ross Gallery inaugural faculty director Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, will present a selection of recent paintings by Penn alum Allison Zuckerman that exemplify her exuberant, layered approach to image-making. Using paint and collage, Zuckerman creates densely constructed compositions that draw from art history, popular culture, and the internet. Her paintings celebrate the history of the image-making medium while reimagining who has the power to shape its future. Free and open to the public.

Participants of all ages and backgrounds are invited to this Common Press workshop to print a copy of the Declaration of Independence. The composition will be set in Caslon metal type and ready to print on the studio’s 1889 cast-iron handpress. These hour-long demonstrations are part of America 250 at Penn programming. Groups of up to 20 people are welcome. Reserve a time slot.

1776: The Musical will immerse audiences in the behind-the-scenes debates and discussions leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence—expressed in song and rapid-fire dialogue. Theatre students from across the Philadelphia area will bring these debates, decisions, and personalities to life on stage. Shows will be at various times. Reserve tickets in advance. Penn students receive a discount with Penn ID.

Freedom Now Fest returns to West Philadelphia bringing together live music, art, film, food, family activities, local businesses, and community celebration on the same streets where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his Freedom Now Rally speech. Visitors are invited to spend the afternoon exploring Lancaster Avenue, supporting Black-owned businesses, discovering local artists, enjoying food, connecting with neighbors, and experiencing one of Philadelphia’s most significant cultural celebrations. Free and open to the public.

This SENSE-sational Friday event at the Morris Arboretum & Gardens will focus on sight, inviting participants of all ages to visually explore native plants and savor their bright colors. This program will include take-home crafts. Attendees will meet at the Morris Cottage. Free with Penn ID.

This symposium—the culmination of the 2026 Penn LDI Summer Undergraduate Mentored Research Program (SUMR)—will spotlight the participating SUMR scholars and their faculty mentors, featuring presentations about their mentor-directed research work. Free and open to the public.

This presentation will chart the pathway from the February 2025 National Library of Medicine’s Yellow Fever Panel Exhibit and Discussion to an evolving partnership in support of Department of History and Sociology of Science associate professor Rana Hogarth’s undergraduate interdisciplinary scholars within Holman Biotech Commons and Penn Libraries. The session will explore how this collaboration has flourished, and how experiences with students surfaced critical questions about AI and historical research. Free and open to the public. Register to attend either virtually or in person.

This program brings together dozens of student performing arts groups for a series of short, get-to-know-you performances. Organized by the PAC Executive Board with support from Platt Student Performing Arts House and the PAC Shop, this event invites all students to get a taste of the various performing clubs at Penn.

During New Student Orientation, the Platt Student Performing Arts House’s Theater Arts Council will host a short concert musical production, followed by a “meet and theat” for students to meet and interact. Free and open to the Penn community.

This opening reception will mark the launch of the Arthur Ross Gallery’s fall exhibition “At Liberty: Life in the City of Brotherly Love During the Early Republic,” which will explore Philadelphia during the nation’s formative years through paintings, sculptures, and works on paper drawn from major regional and national collections. Guests can enjoy special remarks from the curator and distinguished guests, themed refreshments inspired by the era, and a live performance by the Penn Shabbatones, the University’s premier Jewish a cappella group. Free and open to the public. Reserve tickets in advance.

A practice called “democratic listening” has shown promise when used by Penn students on multiple trips to communities across Pennsylvania. Having trained and led students on those trips, Lia C. Howard, a political scientist and fellows director for the SNF Paideia Program, will share some early findings that magnify how to reduce current political polarization in the U.S. This event is part of America 250 at Penn programming. Free and open to the public. Register to attend.

During this Kelly Writers House panel, award-winning short story author Isabel J. Kim and TechCrunch senior writer Amanda Silberling—both co-hosts of “Wow If True,” a podcast about internet culture—will facilitate a conversation themed around “Predicting the Future: Real and Imagined Technologies.” Free and open to the Penn community.

This University-wide career fair covers a range of industries, including consulting, consumer products, education, finance, government, healthcare, insurance, marketing/communications, manufacturing, nonprofits, real estate, retail, and more. Open to all on-campus students, postdocs, and alumni served by Career Services.

This panel, hosted by Penn’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, will examine the evidence and policy outlook for consumer-directed health care as a federal solution to expanded coverage, with a focus on affordability, access, and health outcomes. Free and open to the public. Register to attend.

Participants can enhance their search for full-time postgraduate positions and/or summer internships by connecting with a variety of employers. All students, postdocs, and alumni served by Penn Career Services are invited to attend. Online students in a degree program are also encouraged to participate.

With 2026 marking the centennial of Michel Foucault’s birth and the 50-year anniversary of the publication of his landmark “History of Sexuality, Vol. 1,” this two-day symposium, hosted by the Kislak Center, will convene an international group of Foucault specialist to offer a renewed assessment of Foucault’s influential thought. The Thursday session will be 2:00-8:00 p.m. and the Friday session will be 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Free and open to the public. Register to attend.

Drawing on themes from her bestselling 2019 book “How to Do Nothing,” author Jenny Odell will examine anxieties about our ability to focus and the way that the issue is often emptied of social, political, and spiritual content. Odell will discuss how modern advice regarding the practice of attention can often be inadequate because it misses the role of purpose, commitment, and love. The talk will be followed by a Q&A and book signing. Free and open to the public.

This group-exhibition project, developed by Zairong Xiang of Duke Kunshan University in Shanghai and Denise Ryner of the University of Pennsylvania, focuses on historical and social circumstances of solidarity as a process through artistic investigations of primarily Black, African, and Chinese diasporic and economic networks. The exhibit will feature the work of nine artists—representing the Caribbean, South Pacific, West Africa, Taiwan, China, and the U.S.—including video projections, installations, prints, and archival reproductions. Free and open to the public.

In the inaugural iteration of the Institute of Contemporary Art’s new research residency program, interdisciplinary artist Wilmer Wilson IV will explore how squirrels can reflect shifting ideals of American behavior and belonging. Wilson will follow the squirrel across a range of overlooked cultural and political histories—such as Benjamin Franklin’s rodent diplomat Mungo to the recent viral controversies of TikTok star Peanut—and will examine how categories such as “pet,” “pest,” and “wildlife” produce hierarchies of care, visibility, and disposability. SKIRL! will feature a site-specific installation, sculptures, performances, and works on paper. Free and open to the public.

For this installment in the Institute of Contemporary Arts’s “Entryways” project series, the vividly-colored, abstract work of artist Saif Azzuz—a member of the Yurok Tribe, whose ancestral lands are located in present-day northern California—will fill ICA’s Sansom Street-facing windows. The project—informed by research into the natural history of Philadelphia—and its placement on the ICA building exterior is designed to prompt conversations about how communities and the natural environment can support each other. Free and open to the public.

Waste Scenes is a two-channel video created during Maia Chao and Fred Schmidt-Arenales artist residency at Philadelphia-based Recycled Artist in Residency. Working inside an active recycling center, the artists built short, performative vignettes choreographed by various materials including discarded books and old tapes found on site. This video installation explores how the accumulation of debris embodies the failed aspirations of post-industrial Northern U.S. Through episodic narration, Schmidt-Arenales and Chao reinterpret material decomposition to encourage recognition of the throwaway culture of contemporary America. Free and open to the public.

During the 2026 Evan C. Thompson Chair Lecture on Excellence in Teaching, Jie Deng, the Andrea B. Laporte Endowed Professor at Penn Nursing, will consider how to create classes that allow students to connect and learn no matter their preparation. By sharing strategies for bringing students’ individual interests and past experiences into the classroom, Deng will discuss ways of widening the range of learning possibilities for all students. A reception will follow. Free and open to the public. Register to attend.

This talk, led by Damon Centola, Elihu Katz Professor of Communication, Sociology, and Engineering at the Annenberg School for Communication, will discuss the new science of “crowd wisdom,” showing that when people are connected through the right network structures, social influence becomes a powerful source of collective intelligence. Centola will present the practical principles these discoveries offer for designing smarter teams, organizations, online platforms, communities, and institutions. Free and open to the public. Register to attend.

This symposium, led by Historic Trappe, Penn’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies, and Ursinus College, will mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by exploring the diaries, journals, letters, and material culture made or used by people in the mid-Atlantic region from 1760–1790. Expert panels will explore family dynamics amid political upheaval, wartime experiences of soldiers and civilians, accounts from different religious perspectives, and new approaches to non-English sources on the American Revolution. Free and open to the public.

All Penn students, faculty, postdocs, and staff are welcome to drop in during Wellness at Penn’s annual Flu Clinic between Oct. 7-9 for their free flu shot. Penn ID is required.

The Weitzman School of Design’s MFA program will host open studios in the interdisciplinary graduate fine arts department in partnership with Philadelphia-based organization The Center for Emerging Visual Artists. Free and open to the public, these open studios offer a chance to mingle with MFA students and view their current work. Studios are located at Weitzman Hall and the Franklin Building.

Australian contemporary circus company, Gravity & Other Myths, debuts in Philadelphia with its acclaimed hit, “Ten Thousand Hours.” Accompanied by live percussion, eight acrobats blend physicality with comedy in this performance tribute to the time, effort, and dedication it takes to hone a skill. After a sold-out run at Edinburgh Festival Fringe with a host of five-star reviews, this group honors the human body and the extraordinary things it can do. Students receive a discount with Penn ID.

So-Rim Lee, a Korea Foundation Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Penn, will discuss her new book “Remedying the Body: Plastic Surgery and the Politics of Embodiment in Korea.” Pulling together archival and cultural materials from the 1950s to the 2020s, Lee will frame Korea as a paradigmatic example to reimagine coalitional ways of surviving a world governed by oppressive bodily norms. A reception will follow. Free and open to the public.