Exhibitions Archived in: 2002

The Art of Mu Xin: Landscape Paintings and Prison Notes

January 24 – March 31, 2002

This exhibition explored the work of contemporary Chinese artist Mu Xin (born 1927), revealing his distinctive personal and artistic responses to tumultuous changes within twentieth-century China. This exhibition featured a suite of thirty-three landscape paintings (1977–1978) created through a unique synthesis of Western and traditional Chinese paintings styles, and sixty-six... more »

Performative Images

March 30 – June 16, 2002

During the 1960s and 1970s, photography became an indispensable tool for many artists. This exhibition linked two key trends: the use of photography to document performances or projects, and the use of other media—including newspapers, magazines, and film—to circulate work. Performative Images included work by Robert Heinecken, Adrian Piper, Robert... more »

Critical Mass

April 25 – June 23, 2002

Critical Mass featured new commissions by Laurie Palmer, Robert Peters, Gregory Sholette, and Temporary Services (a four-member collective; Brett Bloom, Salem Collo-Julin, and Marc Fischer participated here). They represented several generations of Chicago-based artists who apply activist intentions, conceptual strategies, and experimental artistic approaches to complex social issues; they epitomize... more »

Nature, Myth, Allegory: Imagining Reality in the Nineteenth Century

May 14 – October 6, 2002

Drawing from the Smart's permanent collection, this intimate exhibition explored how nineteenth-century artists and their audiences drew on views of the natural world, classical imagery, allegory and historical subjects to construct a meaningful understanding of the rapidly changing present. Works by Adolf Braun, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Emile René Ménard, Benjamin West,... more »

Face Off: Works by Chicago Photographers in the Smart Museum Collection

June 22 – September 8, 2002

The photographs in this exhibition shared a complex relationship with the human face. By exploring the camera's ability to create and unmask illusions (sometimes simultaneously), Face Off proposed that the viewer's role in discovering such obfuscation is an integral part of the work of art. Featured artists included Jonas Dovydenas,... more »

Outside In: Self-Taught Artists and Chicago

July 11 – September 15, 2002

Organized from the Smart Museum's permanent collection and selected loans, this exhibition included works in a variety of media by Chicago self-taught artists Henry Darger, Bonnie Harris, Aldobrando Piacenza, Pauline Simon, and Joseph Yoakum, as well as Jesse Howard, Martin Ramirez and others who did not live in Chicago but... more »

The Virtuous Image: Korean Painting and Calligraphy from the Late Choson Dynasty in the Smart Museum Collection

September 14 – December 15, 2002

Korean scholar or "literati" painting flourished during the Choson dynasty (1392–1910), where members of the wealthy scholar-gentry class and civil officials alike brushed scroll paintings and albums of lyrical poetry, idealized landscapes, austere bamboo, and other refined subjects. Although based on classical Chinese themes, such works reveal a specific Korean... more »

Confronting Identities in German Art: Myths, Reactions, Reflections

October 3, 2002 – January 5, 2003

Drawing on the museum's rich holdings of German art and a number of important loans, this exhibition examined how artists and artworks defined or responded to individual, social and national identities over the course of the last two centuries. A chronological presentation framed several critical themes, including the relationship between... more »

Sacred Fragments: Magic, Mystery, and Religion in the Ancient World

October 22, 2002 – March 16, 2003

Greek, Roman, and Early Christian antiquities from the Smart Museum's permanent collection and loans of prints and illustrated books from Renaissance and Baroque Europe focused on the religious practices of the ancient Mediterranean world an the modern challenges in piecing together an accurate picture of classical religion from surviving material... more »

Reflections of Beauty: Late Nineteenth-Century Japanese Prints in the Smart Museum Collection

December 15, 2002 – March 23, 2003

Widespread societal transformation, engendered by Japan's new openness to the outside world during the nineteenth century, greatly impacted the print culture known as Ukiyo-e that flourished in the theater and courtesan quarters of Edo (modern Tokyo). The three artists featured in this exhibition—Kunisada (1786–1865), Kunishika (1835–1900), and Chikenobu (1838–1912)—represent a... more »

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