Welcome to Chautauqua Institution! We are a community of artists, educators, thinkers, faith leaders and friends dedicated to exploring the best in humanity.

The Chautauqua Institution is a not-for-profit, 750-acre educational center beside Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York State, where approximately 7,500 persons are in residence on any day during a nine-week season, and a total of over 100,000 attend scheduled public events.

Chautauqua as a community celebrates, encourages and studies the arts and treats them as integral to all of learning. With symphony, opera, theater, dance, visual arts and a renowned music school, Chautauqua produces an “ecstatic mix” of …

Whether you attend a single weekend performance with a friend or immerse yourself in nine weeks of classes, lectures and events with your partner – Chautauqua never disappoints. Here, there’s always more to experience and learn for visitors of all ages and walks of life.

There’s nothing quite like Chautauqua in the summer. Experience our grounds as they come alive with guests seeking relaxation, reinvention and our many innovative programs, performances and recreational activities.

Through insightful, interdisciplinary case studies, Chautauqua will bring together social scientists, economists, changemakers and futurists to examine the impact of transformation on us, our communities and our world.

Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle (CLSC) Unbound Presentation — Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray and The Queens of Crime by Marie Benedict She found the literary voices that would inspire the world….

Take a day trip to restore, reset and reconnect at Chautauqua Institution! Historian and author David McCullough once called Chautauqua “a summer encampment and a small town, a college campus, an arts colony, a music festival, a religious retreat, and …

Every summer, over the course of nine weeks, more than 100,000 people visit Chautauqua Institution in search of respite, community and personal growth. And every summer, they find it. See for yourself what makes Chautauqua Institution a destination like no other.

From 1933 to 1936, the future of Chautauqua Institution was at significant risk. As the United States’ economy entered and remained in a great depression, visitors and gate revenues decreased at Chautauqua.