Here's a look at some of the cultural events — both in-person and virtual — open to the University and local community:
Performances
Bach's Lunch – 12:10-12:45 p.m., Oct. 29, Eisenhower Chapel, University Park campus. "Bach's Lunch" is a weekly concert series during the school year. These popular concerts are brief in order to make it possible for the University community to attend during the lunch hour. Free.
"Clue" – 7:30 p.m., Oct. 29, Eisenhower Auditorium, University Park campus. Murder and blackmail are on the menu when six mysterious guests assemble at Boddy Manor for a night they’ll never forget. This performance, live on stage, is based on the fan-favorite 1985 Paramount Pictures movie and inspired by the classic Hasbro board game.
"Macbeth" – 7:30 p.m., Oct. 29-30, Wolf Kuhn Theatre, Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts, Altoona campus. This production of “Macbeth” engages Shakespeare’s original practices by performing with the lights on, using a minimal set, and employing direct address so the audience becomes active participants and even scene partners. Ten audience members will be invited to sit on the stage, offering an immersive, interactive experience, directly referencing early modern theatre’s tradition. Free.
"The Wolves" – Multiple performances through Nov. 7, Pavilion Theatre, University Park campus. Penn State Centre Stage, the professional arm of the School of Theatre in the College of Arts and Architecture, will present "The Wolves," a story about a girls’ indoor soccer team tackling the challenges of adolescence.
John Summit – 7 p.m., Oct. 30, Bryce Jordan Center, University Park. Dance music powerhouse John Summit will bring his CTRL ESCAPE arena tour to the Bryce Jordan Center, featuring a new production concept that creates an immersive experience for his next era.
"Massive Contributions" — 6:30 p.m., Nov. 1, School of Music Recital Hall, University Park campus. The Penn State School of Music's Essence of Joy choral ensemble, in the College of Arts and Architecture, will present a concert celebrating the ensemble’s 35th anniversary year and the Black composers and arrangers whose work has shaped choral music across generations and genres.
"Noises Off" — 7:30 p.m., Nov. 4-7, Mukund S. Kulkarni Theatre, SEC Building, Harrisburg campus. The School of Humanities will showcase campus talents in its fall play, which presents a chaotic group of travelling actors rehearsing a play called "Nothing's On."
Shanghai Ballet: Giselle – 7:30 p.m., Nov. 5, Eisenhower Auditorium, University Park campus. Shanghai Ballet returns to North America with "Giselle," one of the most beloved story ballets in the classical canon. From sunlit village scenes to a ghostly, moonlit world, the production unfolds with elegance, atmosphere, and lyrical beauty. Shanghai Ballet, one of China’s leading ballet companies, is celebrated for its performances that blend classical ballet with distinctive Chinese artistry.
Events
With These Hands: A Collaborative Poetry Experience – Noon, Oct. 29, Student Union Building Lodge, Beaver campus. Erin Murphy, 2026-27 Penn State Laureate and award-winning poet and prose writer, will read from and discuss her latest books. Attendees will have the opportunity to create their own lines of poetry as part of a collaborative project.
Spooky Plants Walk – 4-5 p.m., Oct. 29, the Arboretum, University Park campus. Discover the science and history of spooky plants with Arboretum programs coordinator and plant nerd Rebecca Horwitt.
Art After Hours: Halloween Spooktacular – 5-8 p.m., Oct. 29, Palmer Museum of Art, University Park campus. Dare to get spooked at the Palmer with the Halloween Spooktacular. Bring your own MONSTERpiece to life, immortalize your visit in the Phantom PhotoBOOth and compete for prizes in the costume contest.
Schuylkill Scarecrow Festival – Through Oct. 31, southern Schuylkill County, Schuylkill campus. This family-friendly festival will transform communities across southern Schuylkill County into an outdoor gallery of imaginative scarecrow displays created primarily from repurposed, reclaimed and recycled materials. Visitors can explore the displays at their own pace through a self-guided walking and driving tour.
Centre Film Festival — Various times and locations, Nov. 2-8. The eighth-annual festival includes animation, documentary, experimental and narrative options, feature-length films and shorts. Overall, the weeklong festival includes 51 films making their Pennsylvania premieres and three making their U.S. premiere. Seventeen films selected for the festival were made in Pennsylvania and the schedule includes 13 student films.
Jet Tila food events – Various times and locations, Nov. 3-5, University Park campus. Food television personality and chef Jet Tila will return to Penn State on Nov. 3-5 to headline several on-campus events. Tila, who first visited Penn State for a series of events in 2025, is an internationally celebrated culinary expert known for competing on "Iron Chef America" and hosting various Food Network shows.
"Arrival" film screening — 6:30 p.m., Nov. 4, State Theatre, Downtown State College. The Penn State Eberly College of Science and Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics will host a free screening of the 2016 film "Arrival" — starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker — as part of the college’s Science Matters Spotlight Sessions and Friedman Lectures in Astronomy and Astrophysics.
"Third Places" film screenings — 7 p.m., Nov. 4, Online. Penn State Sustainability's Intersections Film Series will screen three short films that highlight the value of "Third Places." The set of films shows various ways that community can be constructed. Free. Registration required.
"Threaded Paths" – 5-7 p.m., Nov. 6, Woskob Family Gallery, 146 S. Allen St., State College. The College of Arts and Architecture offers a hands-on textile workshop exploring memory, personal journeys and the stories held in materials. Participants will create a 10 inch-by-10 inch textile piece using thread, yarn, fabric, found materials, stitching, layering and collage.
Lectures
Anderson Lecture Series: Tijay Mohammed — 2:30 p.m., Nov. 3, Kern Graduate Building, University Park campus. The College of Arts and Architecture’s School of Visual Arts will conclude the fall programming for its annual Anderson Lecture Series by welcoming Ghanaian-born visual artist Tijay Mohammed.
"Minding the Nanoplastics: Bringing the Worlds of Environmental Science and Toxicology Together to Better Understand an Emerging Global Exposure" — 4 p.m., Nov. 3, 102 Animal, Veterinary, and Biomedical Sciences Building, University Park campus. A talk by Matthew Campen, director, New Mexico Center for Metals in Biology and Medicine and Regents' Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of New Mexico, will examine nanoplastics — plastic particles smaller than 100 nanometers in at least one dimension — and recent efforts to measure their concentration in human tissue.
In-person exhibits
Hidenori Ishii – Through Oct. 31, HUB Gallery, University Park campus. Hidenori Ishii's practice encompasses painting, screen-printing, and installation, focusing on the complex interplay between civilization and nature. A diverse array of paintings, mixed media pieces, and installations delve into themes of reflection and transparency, as well as the connections between inside and outside spaces.
"The Magician's Daughter" – Through Nov. 6, Sheetz Gallery, Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts, Altoona campus. A body of work by Ivyside Juried exhibition winner Lisa Co invites visitors to reflect on care, emotional comfort and the unseen experiences that shape our lives. Using printmaking, bookmaking and collage, Co creates layered works featuring repeated imagery, dreamlike spaces and ethereal figures. The exhibition explores themes of longing, vulnerability and the quiet acts of care that connect us to ourselves and others.
"Outside Over There" – Through Nov. 6, McLanahan Gallery, Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts, Altoona campus. A body of work by Ivyside Juried exhibition winner Celine Browning presents a powerful series of blind contour drawings that explore the experience of witnessing today's rapidly unfolding news. Created using a drawing method in which the artist looks only at the subject and never at the page, the works began as a response to images of ICE raids in Minneapolis in early 2026 and have since expanded to include photographs from news sources and the artist's own documentation.
"Walk With Us" – Through Nov. 19, Multiple locations, Berks campus. A community-based art exhibition that relates the firsthand experiences of people and families impacted by incarceration and asks the viewer to consider the future of justice in Berks County.
“Dreaming American Futures: Invitational 250” – Through Nov. 29, Palmer Museum of Art, University Park campus. In celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, the Palmer invited artists to submit works that address the following themes: Activating Change, Bridging the Divide, Pursuit of Happiness and A More Perfect Union. The works on view include paintings, sculpture, ceramics, mixed-media assemblages, photographs and works on paper.
“Telling Stories: Rethinking American Art at the Palmer” – Through Nov. 29, Palmer Museum of Art, University Park campus. This installation experiments with thematic approaches to the Palmer Museum of Art’s American art collection, grouping works of various genres, styles and periods together under the themes “Follow the Money” and “American Places" and exploring multiple interpretations of individual artworks.
“Out of the Shadows: Drawings and Watercolors by American Women” – Through Dec. 6, Palmer Museum of Art, University Park campus. Brought literally and figuratively out of the shadows, these works by American women artists from the 1820s to the 1950s illuminate an often overlooked yet fundamental history of American art. The audience is invited to consider the relationships between access, medium, and gender that this exhibition brings to light.
"The Art of the Tattoo" — Through Dec. 11, Art Space, Schuylkill campus. An exhibition presented by Altered Ego Tattoos that explores tattooing as an art form and the creative relationship between artist and client.
“LIGHT” – Through Dec. 11, Ronald K. De Long Gallery, Lehigh Valley campus. This group of artists examines the layered definitions of a single concept, LIGHT. Through a deliberate juxtaposition of contrasting materials and conceptual frameworks, the exhibition fosters dynamic, unexpected visual relationships.
"The Art of the Tattoo" – Through Dec. 11, Art Space, Schuylkill campus. “The Art of the Tattoo” looks beyond the finished tattoo to explore the creative process behind the work. The exhibition examines the history and evolution of tattooing, showcases the stories and artwork of clients, and highlights how different artists can approach the same idea in distinct ways.
"Kith & Kin: A Rewilding of Sound and Form" — Through Dec. 13, HUB-Robeson Galleries, University Park campus. An exhibition by interdisciplinary artist Melissa Hyatt Foss traces her path from her academic and artistic training in Argentina, where she reconstructed, performed and composed with pre-Columbian instruments, to a new body of work rooted in her own memories and her relationships with what she calls "more-than-human kin." The exhibition also features a selection of ancient instruments on loan from Penn State's Matson Museum of Anthropology, which have informed and inspired Foss's practice.
“America Works: Building and Sustaining the Nation” – Through Dec. 13, Palmer Museum of Art, University Park campus. “America Works: Building and Sustaining the Nation” traces the deep connections among work, power and nation-building in the United States. While exploring the culture and politics of working people, America Works addresses how changes in technology, law and policy, and activism on the part of workers have impacted labor dynamics throughout history.
“Through Different Eyes: Industrial Worlds by Women Artists” – Through December, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum & Art Gallery, University Park campus. This exhibit explores the lives of women artists in 20th-century industrial Pennsylvania through their artwork and premiers the curatorial work of undergraduate students Alexis Woodring, a public relations major, and Gabriella Heidorn, an art history major with a minor in French and Francophone studies, who both have special interests in American art.
"Recipes" – Through Jan. 8, 2027, HUB-Robeson Center, University Park campus. Working in encaustic — a process that uses molten paint made from beeswax, pigment and damar resin — artist Christine Sajecki grinds pigments harvested from her environment and incorporates recycled commercial pigments saved from years of studio practice. Her work explores ways to use waste and culinary byproducts in painting.
"Black Geographies in Circulation" – Through Feb. 26, 2027, Pattee Library, University Park campus. This exhibit highlights a selection of archival stamps and postcards from the Charles L. Blockson Collection of African-Americana and the African Diaspora that help trace the movement of African-descended people, their experiences, ideas and collective memory across geographic and cultural boundaries.
“Hybrid Zones” – Through March 4, 2027, HUB Gallery, University Park campus. “Hybrid Zones” is an immersive exploration of the post-industrial landscape of Eastern Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal region. Through drawing, photography, and video installation, the artists trace the environmental and psychological imprint of centuries of resource extraction. In this powerful new body of work, Rachel Bacon and Meredith Davenport confront the entanglement of human and nonhuman systems, reflecting on how deeply industrial history is inscribed into the land—and into us.
"The Way I Saw It: A Photography Retrospective" – Through Aug. 1, 2027, Penn State All-Sports Museum, University Park campus. “The Way I Saw It” celebrates the work of Penn State alumnus Pat Little, who started out with the Daily Collegian and spent over three decades as a photojournalist with the Centre Daily Times, Associated Press and Reuters. Starting from a million photo negatives then narrowed down to a set of 5,000 photographs, the exhibit presents a final curated collection of 100 unique and powerful images of Penn State athletes, coaches, venues and fans, shot by Little between 1977 and 2005.
Virtual exhibits and online resources
In addition to in-person events, a number of virtual exhibits and online resources are available through University departments. The Palmer Museum of Art and Penn State University Libraries offer a rotating selection of historical and artistic collections to view via their websites, as well as other online resources.