The brand-new Schwarzman Center for the Humanities has recently opened at the University of Oxford. The Center will house at least nine faculties across the Humanities Division, and has a number of specialist music spaces, including the 500-seat Sohmen Concert Hall.

The center is the university's largest single building project, and was funded by a £150 million donation from Blackstone CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman. In 2019, Oxford described the donation as being the largest single gift that the university has received since the Renaissance.

The Center also features a black box experimental performance space, dance studio and cinema, an exhibition hall, and rehearsal rooms. In addition, the libraries of all the associated faculties have been conglomerated into one singular Bodleian Humanities Library.

The Center will also play host to a cultural program, which in its first year is set to include a collaboration with the Icelandic band Sigur Rós, a "creation myth for the age of AI" presented by Headlong Theatre, which is a collaboration between the American street dancer Lil Buck and UK hip-hop dance company ZooNation, and BBC broadcaster Samira Ahmed chairing a series of conversations.

"As one of the world’s top universities for the Humanities, we attract the very best researchers and teachers in its subject areas," said Professor Irene Tracey, the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford. "To support their ambition for world-leading excellence and collaboration within and across subject boundaries, with artists or scientists, we need places like the new Schwarzman Center."

"Its state-of-the-art facilities, reaching out deep into the international cultural community, enables us all to come together in a new dialogue in one extraordinary building befitting of this great and historic University and City."

"This extraordinary investment by Stephen A. Schwarzman represents an enormous vote of confidence in the humanities," said Lord Hague of Richmond, the Chancellor of Oxford. "The launch of the Schwarzman Center comes at a time when the perspectives of humanities experts have never been more important in confronting the big challenges facing the world, including AI, human rights and the environment."

"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."