Among the opening-day festivities at Oxford’s imposing Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, we’ll single out the choral installation 360 Vessels, specially commissioned for the glass-domed Great Hall. The installation element is by Es Devlin, that Napoleon of design whose latest spectacles include the Metropolitan Opera’s simultaneously intimate and colossal new Tristan und Isolde. For the Schwarzman Centre, she’s cooking up a circular “landscape” made of 360 handmade clay vessels shaped—if you can credit this—“in collaboration with the Centre’s Institute for Ethics in AI.” For the ear, there are vocals from the Schola Cantorum of Oxford, from the pen of the smokin’ Nico Muhly. Let architecture critics sing the praises of the to-die-for new facility, which occupies the heart of Oxford’s historic Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, housing the faculties of seven humanities departments plus numerous public spaces under a single roof. The entire complex is “Passivhaus certified,” meaning that it conforms to the most exacting, state-of-the-art sustainability standards. Apart from all those vessels, there’s lots more to pique a visitor’s curiosity. For instance, the Scottish Ensemble in excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s ravishing Serenade for Strings, played from memory as the musicians also execute choreography by Örjan Andersson. For another instance, the trailblazing audio installation Ära, promising to evoke pristine Icelandic landscapes. Be there or be square. —Matthew Gurewitsch