January 18 – April 24, 2005
The vast economic and social changes of the Industrial Revolution dramatically transformed the long-held ways of country and village life: centralizing resources in city environments, changing people's occupations, and ultimately refacing the bucolic landscape. Whether documenting true habits of rural life or nostalgically returning to pastoral themes of an... more »
February 3 – May 15, 2005
As relatively inexpensive, transportable, and storable objects, prints had an important place in the culture of Renaissance and Baroque Europe. Well before the era of photography and digital images, a variety of print techniques revolutionized the ways in which images could be reproduced and circulated. Reproductive prints—prints that reproduce... more »
February 8 – April 3, 2005
The endlessly inventive etchings of Jacques Callot (1592–1635) make him one of the most important printmakers of the early seventeenth century, or indeed of any period. Whether turning his eye and hand to the devastating wars that plagued his era or to more picturesque and fanciful subjects, he produced... more »
April 9 – June 12, 2005
Often in exhibitions of cultural and historical materials some objects are designated as "art" (e.g. paintings and prints) and others as "material culture" (e.g. textiles and shoes). This intimate exhibition drew from more than 3,500 Japanese objects in the Boone Collection of the Field Museum in Chicago—traditionally a place... more »
May 10 – November 6, 2005
The twentieth century was a period of extraordinary social and political transformation throughout East Asia. In the wake of an intense period of foreign domination and Western influence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many artists throughout East Asia struggled to reconcile the mounting tension between time honored... more »
June 2 – September 18, 2005
Humble in origin, clay is one of the oldest and most enduring of all artistic mediums. Starting in the late 19th century, American and European artists—inspired by non-Western traditions and framed by the context of social reform—reimagined the potential of this simple material. Over the next 100 years studio... more »
June 18 – September 11, 2005
Following the innovative years before World War I when Pablo Picasso and George Braque introduced the Cubist pictorial language into graphic media, Cubist prints became less experimental and more elaborate in design and execution. Frequently, these later prints emphasize sophisticated techniques and subtleties of printing. Less studied than the... more »
September 17 – December 11, 2005
Celebrating the sophisticated literary and artistic culture of nineteenth-century Japan, the social elite of the day commissioned artists and publishers to create costly and intricate prints called surimono. While the Shijo surimono made in Kyoto and Osaka have not received nearly the attention and examination of their Edo (modern... more »
October 6, 2005 – January 15, 2006
Sustainable design attempts to meet the needs of the present without compromising those of future generations. Balancing environmental, social, economic, and aesthetic concerns, sustainable design has the potential to transform everyday life and is being enacted around the world in large and small ways not only by architects and... more »
November 22, 2005 – April 23, 2006
Nothing could be more fundamental to a country's identity than the territory it occupies. Accordingly, artists' renderings of landscape highlight recognizable sites, distinctive topography, or natural beauty. However, landscape styles have never stayed within geographic boundaries. For example, Rome, as the unrivaled center for artistic training over several centuries,... more »
December 17, 2005 – March 12, 2006
In the 1960s and early '70s, many American artists actively questioned the artist's role and responsibility in the public sphere. As they sought political relevance for their work, the relatively easy duplication and dissemination of works on paper made printmaking a choice medium. Selections from two portfolios of prints—one... more »
June 27 – August 25, 2013
The Land Beneath Our Feet: American Art at the Smart MuseumFebruary 13 – June 15, 2014
Performing Images: Opera in Chinese Visual Culture