Exhibitions
Collection Galleries
Exhibitions: Archived
Goshka Macuga: Of what is, that it is; of what is not, that it is not, 2
December 13, 2012 – January 13, 2013
In collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Smart Museum of Art presents a vast (approximately 11 x 38 feet) tapestry by London-based Polish artist Goshka Macuga.... more »
Awash in Color: French and Japanese Prints
October 4, 2012 – January 20, 2013
The rise of color printmaking in France in the late nineteenth century is often attributed to a fascination with Japanese woodblock prints, which began to circulate in great numbers after the opening of Japan in 1854. But a closer look at the history of color printmaking in these two... more »
Renewal and Revision: Japanese Prints of the 1950s and 60s
September 4 – December 9, 2012
This intimate exhibition examines the resurgence and reassessment of Japanese printmaking in the first two decades after World War II. During this period of intense activity, print artists pursued aesthetic developments from the prewar years with renewed vigor and looked beyond Japan to investigate foreign techniques and subjects.... more »
From the Land of the Morning Calm: Traditions of Korean Art
July 5 – September 9, 2012
Over thousands of years, traditional Korean society has forged a unique artistic heritage out of a blend of foreign ideals and local tastes. Korea’s expansive coastline and geographic position in Asia encouraged an outward focus, and Korean history is marked by periods of intense cultural, technological, and religious exchange... more »
Drawing Inward: German Surrealist Richard Oelze
June 19 – August 26, 2012
Richard Oelze (1900–1980) was a self-proclaimed Surrealist who trained at the Bauhaus in Germany, was recognized by the Parisian circle of Surrealists as a kindred spirit, and was included in MoMA’s 1936 landmark exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism. He has since fallen into relative obscurity on both sides of... more »
Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art
February 16 – June 10, 2012
Since the 1930s, numerous artists have used the simple act of sharing food and drink to advance aesthetic goals and to foster critical engagement with the culture of their moment. These artist-orchestrated meals can offer a radical form of hospitality that punctures everyday experience, using the meal as a means... more »
Chris Vorhees and SIMPARCH: Uppers and Downers
January 10 - December 1, 2012
As part of our Threshold series, the collaborative team of Chris Vorhees and SIMPARCH transform the Smart Museum’s reception hall into a fantastical domestic landscape.... more »
Vision and Communism
September 29, 2011 – January 22, 2012
The Soviet artist and designer Viktor Koretsky (1909–1998) created aggressive, emotionally charged images that articulated a Communist vision of the world utterly unlike that of conventional propaganda.... more »
Matthew Metzger: Ghost
September 22, 2011 - October 7, 2012
The instantly recognizable red-and-white scuba “diver down” emblem alerts boaters to keep their distance as a diver is in the water and near the surface. Designed in 1953, it is now commonly emblazoned on stickers, t-shirts, flags, and other products.... more »
Process and Artistry in the Soviet Vanguard
August 30, 2011 – January 22, 2012
This intimate exhibition offers a rare glimpse at the experimental creative processes that generated iconic Soviet propaganda in the 1920s and 1930s. Featuring works by Gustav Klucis and Valentina Kulagina, it traces classic compositions from preparatory drawings and collage studies to approved designs to posters and other mass-produced print material.... more »
Go Figure
June 30 – September 4, 2011
The human form has endured as a powerful subject throughout the history of art. This episodic exhibition illustrates pivotal moments in figurative art of the last sixty years through the work of nine exceptional artists: Nick Cave, Leon Golub, Yun-Fei Ji, Kerry James Marshall, Christina Ramberg, Martín Ramírez, Ravinder Reddy,... more »
Warhol at Work: Portrait Snapshots, 1973-1986
May 10 – August 21, 2011
Over the course of his career, Pop Art pioneer Andy Warhol took thousands of photographs that were never intended to be seen by the public.... more »
After the Readymade
December 14, 2010 - May 1, 2011
This intimate exhibition charts the history of the readymade, a particular strain of twentieth- and twenty-first-century art that takes manufactured objects as primary material.... more »
The Tragic Muse: Art and Emotion, 1700-1900
February 10 – June 5, 2011
Art is often appreciated for its ability to delight our eyes and refresh our minds. But it can also serve as a powerful vehicle for exploring darker emotions, such as fear, sadness, and grief. And while these themes have a history dating back to the ancients, the ways in which... more »
David Wojnarowicz: A Fire in My Belly
January 4 - February 6, 2011
A leading artist of the 1980s, David Wojnarowicz is known for the richly aesthetic and strongly activist works that he made in response to the AIDS crisis. The artist's 1986–87 film A Fire in My Belly is a poetic, unfinished work that was created in part as a tribute... more »
Bingyi: Cascade
November 18, 2010 - December 11, 2011
The Chinese-born artist Bingyi inaugurates the Threshold series with the specially commissioned Cascade, an enormous painting that fills the central wall in the Smart’s reception hall.... more »
Echoes of the Past: The Buddhist Cave Temples of Xiangtangshan
September 30, 2010 – January 16, 2011
Carved into the mountains of northern China, the Buddhist cave temples of Xiangtangshan (響堂山, pronounced “shahng-tahng-shahn”) were the crowning cultural achievement of the sixth-century Northern Qi dynasty. Once home to a magnificent array of sculptures—monumental Buddhas, elaborate attendant figures, and crouching monsters framed by floral motifs—the limestone caves were severely... more »
Anna Kunz: Eidolon
September 10, 2010 - August 2011
The first art-banner commission in the Smart Museum's Threshold series is Ediolon, a large vinyl collage by Chicago-based artist Anna Kunz.... more »
Darkness Revisited: A Collection of Private Pleasures
September 7 – December 5, 2010
Organized by University of Chicago students, this intimate exhibition of prints from the Smart Museum's collection revisits the themes of The Darker Side of Light: Arts of Privacy, 1850–1900 and offers a new look at the shadowed interiors and private introspections of late nineteenth-century art.... more »
Mid-Century: "Good Design" in Europe and America, 1850-1950
July 8 – September 5, 2010
Between 1850 and 1950, progressive artists, designers, and architects decisively reshaped the everyday world of objects. Advocating for design reform—and by extension, social reform—they promoted a host of competing ideologies that embraced aesthetic revolution and technical innovation.... more »
"People Wasn't Made to Burn": Ben Shahn and the Hickman Story
May 11 – August 29, 2010
In early 1947, a fire ripped through the one-room attic of a tenement building on Chicago’s West Side, killing four children. Stricken by grief, the father of the victims, James Hickman, subsequently shot and killed the building’s landlord, who had threatened to burn the property down.... more »
The Darker Side of Light: Arts of Privacy, 1850-1900
February 11 – June 13, 2010
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Paris reigned as the city of light and Impressionism captured the bustle of its lively streets and cafés. But there is another dimension to the period, one captured by less well known, sometimes enigmatic, and often melancholy imagery.... more »
Sites to Behold: Travels in Eighteenth-Century Rome
November 3, 2009 – April 11, 2010
Rome has long been a leading tourist destination. Many of the "must-see" sites were codified centuries ago as part of the Grand Tour, a journey undertaken by young aristocrats to complete their education and give them experience of the world. But by the late eighteenth century, the once-exclusive Grand Tour... more »
Heartland
October 1, 2009 – January 17, 2010
Throughout the vast interior of the United States, contemporary artists are responding to the world around them and reshaping it in unexpected ways. Organized by the Smart Museum of Art and the Van Abbemuseum, one of Europe’s premier contemporary art institutions, this exhibition offers an idiosyncratic look at the... more »
Joseph Yoakum: Line and Landscape
September 8, 2009 – May 2, 2010
During the last decade of his life, self-taught artist and South Side resident Joseph Yoakum (1890–1972) began drawing almost full time. He produced several thousand works in this short period, mostly of highly stylized landscapes.... more »
Malleable Likeness and the Photographic Portrait
May 19 – August 30, 2009
Although portraits have been produced for centuries in a variety of media, photography has played a pivotal role in the genre's history. To a large extent, the photographic portrait's popularity stemmed from the medium's capacity to quickly and inexpensively reproduce a sitter's appearance with an unprecedented degree of mimetic... more »
The Scholar's Studio: Selections from the Edward A. and Inge Maser Collection
May 5 – October 18, 2009
Edward A. Maser was the first director of the Smart Museum and a scholar of the baroque. A professor of art history at the University of Chicago, he shaped the early years of the Museum, guiding the development of its artistic and academic character through judicious acquisitions of medieval,... more »
Your Pal, Cliff: Selections from the H. C. Westermann Study Collection
April 2 – September 6, 2009
Horace Clifford (H. C.) Westermann (1922–1981) created a meticulously crafted and highly personal body of work that defies easy categorization.... more »
Aaron Siskind: The Thing Itself
January 13 – May 10, 2009
Aaron Siskind (1903–1991) is best known for his abstract photographs, often of natural forms or architectural features that were manipulated in order to produce unfamiliar images.... more »
The 'Writing' of Modern Life: The Etching Revival in France, Britain, and the U.S., 1850-1940
November 18, 2008 – April 19, 2009
This exhibition examines the intertwined arts of etching and writing, from the polemical beginnings of the Etching Revival in the 1850s to its twentieth-century afterlife. During this period, etching was reinvented as an original art form that—like writing—was uniquely fitted to expressions of an artist’s individual personality and the... more »
Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art
October 2, 2008 – January 25, 2009
The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangzi River in China is a massive project entwined in controversy. When finally completed, it will stand as the world’s largest generator of hydro-electric power, with a yearly output equal to that of fifty million tons of coal or fifteen nuclear power plants.... more »
The Brutal Line: Drawing Death, Being, and Becoming
September 16, 2008 – January 4, 2009
Through focused comparisons between Italian masters and their modern and contemporary counterparts, The Brutal Line examines how artists have used drawn marks to express extreme physical or existential states.... more »
Street Level: Modern Photography from the Smart Museum Collection
June 17 – September 7, 2008
In the early twentieth century, a number of photographers turned their cameras to their immediate environment, finding subjects in the everyday imagery and visual clamor of the streets in modern cities like Chicago, Moscow, New York, and Paris. Presented as objective and mechanical representations of ordinary urban life, these... more »
Seeing the City: Sloan's New York
May 22 – September 14, 2008
John Sloan's images of New York helped define the city in the popular imagination. In gritty depictions of urban life, Sloan celebrated the metropolis of New York by focusing on street scenes, elevated trains, public spaces, and the lives of ordinary Americans. Yet Sloan's vision was a subjective one,... more »
Idol Anxiety
April 8 – November 2, 2008
Idols are worrisome objects. From ancient times to the present day, theological traditions have reflected on idolatry and questioned the transcendence, significance, and power of objects. Different anxieties have produced different artistic practices.... more »
Sol LeWitt: Color and Line, Reproduced
March 25, 2008 – June 8, 2008
In the 1960s and 1970s, Sol LeWitt was one of the first artists to use color and line as building blocks in a serial approach to art. This approach, pivotal to the development of Minimalist and Conceptual art during the 1960s and 1970s, not only freed color and line... more »
Adaptation: Video Installations by Ben-Ner, Herrera, Sullivan, and Sussman & The Rufus Corporation
January 31 – May 4, 2008
While adaptation is a common practice in popular culture, it is perhaps less well known as a practice in contemporary art. This exhibition looked at the use of adaptation in the work of four leading artists: Guy Ben-Ner, Arturo Herrera, Catherine Sullivan, and Eve Sussman & The Rufus Corporation.... more »
Drawn from the Home of Henry Darger
December 22, 2007 – March 16, 2008
For forty years, the self-taught artist Henry Darger lived and worked in a cluttered one-bedroom apartment on Chicago’s North Side. Teeming with objects of all sorts—from balls of string and Pepto Bismol bottles to coloring books and art supplies—the room revealed Darger’s treasured collections and aesthetic sensibility. In the... more »
Looking and Listening in Nineteenth-Century France
November 6, 2007 – March 23, 2008
Audiences in different eras look at art and listen to music in dramatically different ways. The experience of looking or listening is not historically constant, but rather varies with social settings, technologies, and trends. During the nineteenth century, the habits and fashions associated with looking and listening changed rapidly.... more »
Master Drawings from the Yale University Art Gallery
October 4, 2007 – January 6, 2008
Whether made as preparatory studies or stand-alone works, drawings offer an intimate glimpse at an artist's personality and talents. They reward close examination for their insight into the various stages of the creative process. This exhibition, organized by the Yale University Art Gallery and traveling to the Smart Museum... more »
Objects of Inquiry: The Buckley Collection of Japanese Art
September 15 – December 16, 2007
Between 1886 and 1892, Edmund Buckley assembled an extensive collection of Japanese religious objects and artworks while teaching in Kyoto. The collection formed the basis for Buckley’s doctoral work at the University of Chicago and was exhibited on campus in one of the first systematic displays of Japanese religious objects... more »
The World Writ Small: Early Northern European Prints
June 16 – September 8, 2007
The diminutive engravings and woodcuts made by northern European artists in the first half of the sixteenth century may not be monumental in scale, but they contributed to nothing less than a revolution in printmaking. This flowering of activity, close on the heels of Johann Gutenberg's invention of printing... more »
Living Modern: German and Austrian Art and Design, 1890-1933
June 7 – September 16, 2007
Modernism was not only an innovative aesthetic recognized by its crisp forms and progressive use of materials, but it was also a way of thinking about contemporary life. Amid a backdrop of industrialization, urbanization, world war, and reconstruction, many progressive German and Austrian artists and designers dreamed of a... more »
Majestic Nature/Golden History: German Romantic Art from the Crawford Collection and the Smart Museum of Art
April 24 – October 21, 2007
While the German-speaking lands in nineteenth-century Europe remained divided into a host of sovereign political entities, their artists and writers championed cultural unity by reviving and celebrating the art of their past. The nascent Romantic and Nazarene movements stood in contrast to the Neoclassicism of an earlier generation. Rejecting the... more »
Exported Visions: Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Woodblock Print
March 17 – June 10, 2007
When the traditional art of the Japanese color woodblock print was pushed near extinction at the turn of the twentieth century, a few enterprising young artists and publishers revived the old-fashioned art form. These shin hanga or "new prints" maintained traditional methods and depicted traditional birds, flowers, and landscapes,... more »
Cosmophilia: Islamic Art from the David Collection, Copenhagen
February 1 – May 20, 2007
Cosmophilia—literally "love of ornament"—examined one of the most characteristic and attractive features of Islamic art. Covering a millennium of Islamic history in regions extending from Spain to India, this comprehensive exhibition surveyed the extraordinary range and visual virtuosity of one of the world's great artistic traditions. Organized visually by... more »
Robert Heinecken: Magazines
December 16, 2006 – March 11, 2007
For over four decades, the late Robert Heinecken was a trenchant observer of social and sexual politics. Although he rarely used the camera himself, he made innovative use of photography by combining found photojournalistic and advertising images into new works. In the 1960s, he put this strategy to provocative... more »
The Image as Homage: Portrait of the Artist
November 21, 2006 – April 8, 2007
In the nineteenth century, the Romantic myth of creative genius endowed artists—painters, sculptors, writers, and musicians—with almost godlike status. Portraits of such artists often amounted to hymns of praise that stood, like the artist's own work, as permanent sites of remembrance and veneration, even after the artist's death. At... more »
Drawing as Process in Contemporary Art
October 5 2006 – January 14, 2007
Since at least the Renaissance, drawing has been a familiar part of the creative process in Western art. Traditionally, printmakers, painters, and sculptors might dash off sketches to practice technique, keep notebooks as a way to gather and organize ideas, or draft formal renderings. Today, the styles, materials, and... more »
Adrian Piper: The Mythic Being
September 16 – December 10, 2006
In 1973, Adrian Piper created an alter-ego, the Mythic Being, who became the basis of a pioneering series of performances and photo-based works. Piper—a light-skinned woman of mixed racial heritage—transformed herself into the Mythic Being by donning an Afro wig, sunglasses, and mustache and adopting behavior conventionally identified as... more »
Mark Turbyfill: Works on Paper
June 17 – September 10, 2006
Although remembered today mainly for his contributions to the worlds of avant-garde poetry (in 1926 the vanguard magazine Poetry devoted an entire issue to his writings) and dance (in the 1920s and '30s, he was a principal dancer with Allied Artists and partnered with legendary Chicago choreographer Ruth Page),... more »
The Colors of Identity: Polish Art at Home and Abroad, 1890-1939
May 25 – September 17, 2006
By 1890, a century of occupation and several failed uprisings had impacted Polish culture profoundly, engendering a broad search for a national identity in the arts. Driven by the Mloda Polska (Young Poland) movement, Polish art, literature, architecture, and music flourished even as the country remained partitioned under the... more »
Revisions: Modernist Sculptures by Rodin, Lipchitz, and Moore
May 9 – November 5, 2006
Auguste Rodin, Jacques Lipchitz and Henry Moore each championed sculptural innovations in European modernism and challenged notions of representation that had informed Western art since the Renaissance. From the last quarter of the nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth century, they reinvigorated the figurative academic tradition. At the... more »
GRAPHIKÉ: Writing/Drawing in the Ancient World
March 18 – June 11, 2006
In art of the ancient world, the physical form of words incorporated into works of art relates closely to the artistic design of the object. A painted, incised, or sculpted word may comment on the object in many different ways. It can name the figures represented, provide the artist's... more »
One/Many: Western American Survey Photographs by Bell and O'Sullivan
February 2 – May 7, 2006
William Bell and Timothy H. O'Sullivan, two photographers who joined survey expeditions in the 1860s and 1870s, helped open the eyes of nineteenth-century Americans to the western frontier. Their sweeping and dramatic landscape photographs emerged from government-sponsored geological surveys documenting the western territories. These "Great Surveys" explored huge swaths... more »
Collecting for the Cause: Activist Art in the 1960s and '70s
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 »
Whose Land?: European and American Landscapes, 1600-1900
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 »
Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art
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 »
The Poetry of Shijo Surimono
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 »
Syncopation: André Lhote, Louis Marcoussis, and the Cubist Print
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 »
Centers and Edges: Modern Ceramic Design and Sculpture, 1880-1980
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 »
Quiet Revolutions: Modernizing Traditional Art in East Asia
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 »
Objects of History: The Boone Collection of Japanese Art
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 »
Jacques Callot and the Etched Series
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 »
Paper Museums: The Reproductive Print in Europe, 1500-1800
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 »
Shepherds and Plowhands: Work and Leisure in the Nineteenth Century
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 »
Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China
October 2, 2004 – January 16, 2005
This exhibition was the first to comprehensively consider the outpouring of photo-based art that has taken place in China since the mid-1990s. Ambitious in scale and experimental in nature, the photographic works included in this groundbreaking project offered a range of highly individual responses to the unprecedented changes in... more »
Medieval Art and Medievalisms
September 7, 2004 – January 2, 2005
From the Early Christian material culture of Egypt and the Eastern Roman empire and the devotional art of Gothic Europe to the Celtic revival of the nineteenth century, medieval art shifted from iconic religious image to historical tribute. Drawn from the Smart Museum's holdings, this exhibition looked at key... more »
Smart Collecting: A Thirtieth Anniversary Celebration
July 8 – September 5, 2004
For thirty years the Smart Museum has been a focal point for the visual arts at the University of Chicago and in the city. Part of a year-long series of projects that celebrate the Museum's anniversary, this exhibition highlighted outstanding additions to the Smart's collection. Provocative groupings displayed throughout... more »
Taisho Chic: Japanese Modernity, Nostalgia, and Deco
April 22 – June 20, 2004
As western "Jazz Age" mores and styles jostled with traditional Japanese values of tranquility and harmony, the reign of Emperor Taisho (1912–1926) was an era of transition in Japan when the vastly different cultures of the native past and the seemingly foreign future emerged in stark contrast. Japanese designers... more »
Incisive Vision: The Prints of James Abbott McNeill Whistler
April 2 – June 13, 2004
Active in England and France, the American-born painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) is one of the giants of nineteenth-century printmaking. He was a leader in the revival of etching at this time. This exhibition featured a selection of the 25 prints by Whistler donated to the Smart Museum in... more »
The Uses of Art in Renaissance Italy
March 9 – August 22, 2004
Colorfully decorated earthenware, ornately cast bronze, and masterfully painted wood panels from Renaissance Italy still catch the attention of modern museum visitors many years after they were made. While each artifact was certainly created with a keen eye and an artist's hand, many factors, beyond beauty, influenced its form and... more »
Illuminations: Sculpting with Light
January 22 – April 4, 2004
This exhibition examined three distinct moments in which American artists devised innovative ways to use this elemental, immaterial medium. Beginning in the middle of the last century with Charles Biederman's classic modern construction #9, New York, 1940, one of the first known sculptures to incorporate artificial light (acquired by the... more »
Mapping the Sacred: Nineteenth-Century Japanese Buddhist Prints
December 13, 2003 – March 28, 2004
A map delineates and defines any number of spatial localities, ranging from geography to architecture, but it also illuminates a diversity of cultural and historical possibilities in its rendering of reality into pictorial form. The single, flattened image of a complex, three-dimensional world reflects the imagined vantage point and spatial... more »
Visual Mantras: Meditative Traditions in Japanese Buddhist Art
October 2, 2003 – February 22, 2004
A mantra is broadly understood as a type of chant used to focus attention in Buddhist practice, but visual representations were also employed in these rituals. This exhibition examined these contemplative and meditative images in traditional Japanese culture. From minimalist calligraphy created by Zen masters as part of the meditative... more »
Hiroshi Sugimoto: Sea of Buddha
October 2, 2003 – January 4, 2004
In 1995 after years of lobbying for permission, Hiroshi Sugimoto was allowed to photograph inside Kyoto's famed thirteenth-century Buddhist temple Sanjusangendo (Hall of Thirty-Three Bays). Working at daybreak, a traditional time for meditation, he captured the dawn light illuminating 1,000 statues of the bodhisattva Kannon, an enlightened being of boundless... more »
Mid-Century American Abstraction: Master Works on Paper
September 13 – December 7, 2003
Around 1940, as avant-garde art and artists increasingly flooded into the United States from war-torn Europe, American artists forged a new movement: Abstract Expressionism. This exhibition of eleven master drawings, watercolors, and collages looked at this critical period in the adoption of European modernist styles and subjects and their transformation... more »
Big Idea: The Maquettes of Robert Arneson
July 10 – September 14, 2003
One of the most original sculptors, Robert Arneson (1930–1992) reinvented American figurative ceramics through the integration of sculpture and painting in his large-scale, often satirical, and even iconoclastic pieces. This was the first exhibition devoted to the terracotta maquettes—small-scale, three dimensional sketches—that Arneson left in his studio. These pieces, generally... more »
Material Identity: Prints by Robert Arneson
June 21 – September 7, 2003
Presented in conjunction with the major touring exhibition Big Idea: The Maquettes of Robert Arneson, this exhibition featured the less well-known prints of this pre-eminent California ceramic sculptor and master draftsman. Robert Arneson (1930–1992) transformed American ceramic practice through his integration of sculpture and painting. As presented in this intimate... more »
Dawoud Bey: The Chicago Project
April 24 – June 15, 2003
As part of an intensive twelve-week artist residency that began in November 2002, acclaimed Chicago-based photographer Dawoud Bey led twelve teenagers through a creative and critical investigation of the ways that identity is shaped, portrayed, and expressed in contemporary culture. Bey had previously undertaken short-term projects that bring young people... more »
Group Portrait
April 5 – June 15, 2003
As part of the artist residency Dawoud Bey: The Chicago Project, the twelve Chicago teenage participants curated this exhibition, featuring photographic portraits from the Smart Museum's collection as well as works on loan from a private collection. In a series of discussions, hands-on activities, and meetings with Dawoud Bey and... more »
The Painted Text: Picturing Narrative in European Art
April 1 – September 14, 2003
From the heroic tales of the Greeks to the lyric poetry of Ovid, the stories of the ancients were among the most important sources and inspirations for European artists of the early modern period. Beginning in the Renaissance, painters, and sculptors turned with increasing frequency to ancient myths and epic... more »
Symbol & Substance: The Elaine Ehrenkranz Collection of Japanese Lacquer Boxes
January 23 – April 6, 2003
Japan has long been credited with bringing the art of lacquer to its highest technical and aesthetic development. This exhibition of fifty-six lacquer boxes – ranging in date from the Muromachi (1392–1568) and Momoyama (1568–1615) to Edo (1615–1868) periods – featured one of the most elegant and diverse assemblages of... 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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
Exposure: Recent Chinese Photography from the Smart Museum Collection
December 22, 2001 – March 24, 2002
Experimental art from mainland China has become recognized as an especially vibrant area of contemporary art, one that the Smart Museum has supported through acquisitions as well as exhibitions. The four artists presented in Exposure —Qiu Zhijie, Rong Rong, Song Dong, and Wang Wei—were born during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976)... more »
Crossing Borders: Modern Photographs from Central Europe
September 8 – December 16, 2001
This exhibition was the first in a series highlighting new photography acquisitions. Supplemented by key loans, it featured the Smart Museum's growing collection of modernist Central European photographs made between the two world wars. This exhibition explored the internationalism of this work, expressed in part though the stylistic synthesis of... more »
A Well-Fashioned Image: Clothing and Costumes in European Art, 1500-1850
October 23, 2001 – April 28, 2002
Fashion—or the question of what to wear and how to wear it—is a centuries-old obsession. Beyond superficial concerns with personal appearance, the history of dress points to deep preoccupations surrounding the social order, national identity, and moral decency. A Well-Fashioned Image drew on the Smart Museum's collection and a number... more »
Dreams and Disillusion: Karel Teige and the Czech Avant-Garde
October 4 – December 30, 2001
A leading figure of the avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s, Karel Teige (1900–1951) produced paintings, collages, photomontages, book covers, and film scripts throughout his career. Teige also edited some of the most influential avant-garde journals on Czech and international cultural affairs and wrote profoundly original books and essays on... more »
Recollections and Observations: The Prints of Roger Brown
July 14 – September 2, 2001
Roger Brown (1941–1997) was one of the foremost Chicago Imagist artists. Best known for his paintings, he was also a prolific printmaker, who worked in a range of graphic media—lithography, silkscreen, intaglio, woodcut and commercial printing processes for which he made original drawings. This exhibition presented for the first time... more »
"See America First": Prints by H. C. Westermann
June 28 – September 9, 2001
"See America First" is the first retrospective exhibition of the prints of the American sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker H. C. Westermann (1922–1981), a central figure in American art of the post-war period. The Smart Museum mounted an exhibition of lithographs, linoleum cuts, woodblock prints, and related drawings and ephemera... more »
Borders and Crossroads: The Buddhist Art of Ancient Gandhara
May 8 – October 7, 2001
The Buddhist art of ancient Andhra (today encompassing parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwest India) was a singular cultural achievement, one that co-mingled a Greco-Roman artistic vocabulary with indigenous Indian sculptural and religious traditions. As such, it is a fertile arena for examining artistic florescence along geographic and cultural borders,... more »
Ben Shahn's New York: The Photography of Modern Times
April 10 – June 10, 2001
This exhibition, organized by the Harvard University Art Museums, presented the photographic work of the celebrated American social realist artist Ben Shahn (1898–1969). The exhibition explored the function and meaning of Shahn's experimental work in photography and his subsequent contribution to the emerging field of social documentary within the larger... more »
Anselm Kiefer: Painting, Woodcuts, Sculpture, Books
April 10 – July 8, 2001
Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945) is perhaps best known for majestic paintings from the 1980s and early 1990s that evoked Germany's contested history through charred landscapes and mythic symbolism. This exhibition, drawn from the Manilow collection, used a few choice works to call attention to other aspects of Kiefer's practice. Two... more »
Landscapes of Retrospection: The Magoon Collection of British Drawings and Prints, 1739-1854
January 25 – March 25, 2001
The works in the Magoon Collection—part of the permanent holdings of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College—illustrate the tremendous social and economic transformation of Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The collection consists of prints, drawings, and watercolors by leading artists and architects, and... more »
The Theatrical Baroque
January 9 – April 22, 2001
This exhibition of baroque paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings, taken primarily from the Museum's permanent collection, explored the interaction between the visual arts and the theater of the seventeenth century. The exhibition investigated the incorporation of theatrical devices into visual representation, the role of the baroque audience, and the dynamics... more »
Bernard Meadows: Drawings from the Lazarof Collection
December 16, 2000 – April 1, 2001
This intimate exhibition highlighted the 1999 gift of over a dozen drawings and related sculptures by the modern British artist Bernard Meadows (born 1915) from the collection of Janice and Henri Lazarof. Meadows emerged after World War II as a member of the vanguard of British art, and his post-war... more »
Ages of Bronze: European Sculpture 1500-1900
September 26 – December 17, 2000
This exhibition investigated the uses of bronze and bronze casting in Europe across four centuries. Drawn from the Smart Museum's collection, the works on view explored three principal themes: the Italian Renaissance interest in ancient Greek and Roman bronzes, the production of copies that flourished in the baroque age with... more »
"Canceled": Exhibiting Experimental Art in China
November 19, 2000 – January 7, 2001
"Canceled" was an unconventional exhibition. Its subject was not an artists or a group of art works, but another exhibition that was never realized: It's Me (Beijing, 1998), a group show curated by Leng Lin that was canceled by Chinese officials the day before its scheduled opening. Through a striking... more »
Early Modernist German Drawings and Watercolors
September 12 – December 10, 2000
This intimate exhibition presented master drawings and watercolors by some of the leading German modernists of the first three decades of the twentieth century. Drawn from the Smart Museum's collection and selected loans, these works by Lovis Corinth, George Groxz, Erich Heckel, Kähe Kollwitz, and Emil Nolde, among others, exemplify... more »
Martin Kippenberger: Hotel Drawings and The Happy End of Franz Kafka's "America"
September 10 – November 5, 2000
Martin Kippenberger (1953–1997) was one of the most complex and prolific German artists of his generation. Kippenberger took the artists, the art world, contemporary society, and the self for subject matter, and his work offers contradictory impressions of these subjects: at once absurd, hopeful, tragic, charming and bleak. In a... more »
Ecologies: Mark Dion, Peter Fend, Dan Peterman
July 6 – August 27, 2000
Over the past three decades many artists have incorporated ecological concerns into their work. Their projects – which include land art, community-based projects, ephemeral actions, and installations – often have required new strategies of art-making and have activated unconventional sites. To explore some current manifestations of these interests, the Smart... more »
Transforming Images: The Art of Silver Horn and His Successors
April 14 – June 11, 2000
This groundbreaking exhibition of Native American art featured ledger book drawings, an illustrated diary and calendar, and hide and muslin paintings made by Kiowa artist Silver Horn (1860–1940). Silver Horn's life spanned the tumultuous shift in traditional Plains Indian life and culture at the end of the century. He recorded... more »
Pious Journeys: Christian Devotional Art and Practice in the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance
March 14 – September 11, 2000
This exploration of medieval and Renaissance devotional practices featured a wide range of objects, including painted altarpieces, portable shrines, reliquaries, liturgical furnishings, and illuminated manuscripts. Drawn from the Museum's permanent collection and several public collections, Pious Journeys investigated the critical role played by material culture in early devotion. Like The... more »
The Place of the Antique in Early Modern Europe
November 19, 1999 – February 29, 2000
This exhibition, the first to be held in the newly renovated Old Master Gallery and Joel and Carole Bernstein Gallery, explored the early modern impulse to find inspiration in the ancient past. This intimate exhibition presented paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, works on paper and books from fifteenth- to early nineteenth-century... more »
Surrealism in America During the 1930s and 1940s: Selections from the Penny and Elton Yasuna Collection
November 19, 1999 – March 12, 2000
This exhibition inaugurated the Smart Museum's new Richard and Mary L. Gray Gallery. Featuring artists such as Alexander Calder, Joseph Cornell, Man Ray Kay Sage, and Dorothea Tanning, Surrealism in America showed the pervasive influence of European surrealism in America while demonstrating artists' diverse responses to it. The early history... more »
Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century
February 18, 1999 - April 18, 1999
This groundbreaking exhibition documented major trends in current Chinese experimental art (shiyan meishu), which is characterized by a strong desire to explore new territories in artistic expression. The twenty-one featured artists come from different parts of mainland China or are living abroad in Europe and the United States, and their... more »
Space/Sight/Self
November 19, 1998 – January 10, 1999
This exhibition addressed contemporary portraiture as the nexus of three issues: visuality, location, and identity. It was the culmination of a University of Chicago interdisciplinary course in art, art history and gender studies that investigated the practices, paradigms and aesthetics of contemporary portraiture. The course also explored the role of... more »
Weimar Bodies: Fantasies About the Body in Weimar Art, Science and Medicine
November 4, 1998 – January 10, 1999
Weimar Bodies brought together art works and other kinds of images to explore the range of popular ideas about the human body in Weimar German and to provide a sense of how the short-lived Weimar Republic (1919–1933) saw itself. The exhibition placed images of the body within a broad cultural... more »
Blunt Object
September 11 - October 25, 1998
Blunt Object offered a humorous and fresh look at contemporary sculpture. The exhibition featured both well-known and emerging artists from Europe and the United States, and explored a recent shift in object making from the large-scale and heroic to the vernacular, spunky, and blatant. The exhibition included Aaron Baker, John... more »
Recent Acquisitions: Modern and Contemporary Art
August 25–18 October 1998
This intimate exhibition showcased twentieth-century works acquired by the Smart Museum since 1996. It featured paintings and sculpture by Robert Barnes, Robert Colescott, Joseph Goto, Red Grooms, Miyoko Ito, Edward Keinholz, and David Smith, many of which had not previously been on public view. The exhibition addressed the cultural, regional,... more »
Get Out: Nine Artists from Midway Studios, University of Chicago
July 16 – August 9, 1998
This exhibition presented work by nine students graduating from the University of Chicago’s Midway Studios. The culmination of two years as Master of Fine Arts students, Get Out represented a variety of concerns of the studio art department. It also reflected the pluralism of contemporary artistic practice: the use of... more »
Felix Nussbaum: Assimulation and Dissimulation
May 21 - August 30, 1998
This project was mounted by the Smart Museum as part of the Field Museum’s city-wide programming in conjunction with the exhibition Assignment: Rescue, the Story of Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee (organized by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.). The exhibition featured the Smart Museum’s rare,... more »
The Sublime and the Fantastic - African Art from the Faletti Family Collection
May 14 - June 28, 1998
This exhibition explored the range and depth of African artistic sensibility through 75 works of sub-Saharan art dating from the sixteenth to early twentieth centuries. Drawing on African concepts, the contemplative quality of the sublime was illustrated by emblems of leadership, divination materials, and masterworks of devotional worship made from... more »
Jerome Carlin: Autobiographical Paintings
April 9 - June 14, 1998
Part of the Smart Museum’s alumni artists series, this was an exhibition of paintings by Jerome Carlin (Ph.D. 156, Sociology). Carlin’s works focus on the experience of growing up in the upper-middle-class milieu of Chicago in the 1930s and 1940s.... more »
Archibald Knox (1864-1933), Liberty of London Designer and Master of British Art Nouveau
February 12 - April 19, 1998
Archibald Knox is one of the most influential designers in modern British history. Between 1897 and 1912, his blending of Celtic design with modern aesthetics and manufacturing processes cam to define British Art Nouveau. At the same time, Knox helped the Liberty and Co. department store, which marketed his designs,... more »
Still More Distant Journeys: The Artistic Emigrations of Lasar Segall
October 16, 1997 - January 4, 1998
Born in Vilna, Lithuania, Lasar Segall lived in Berlin and Dresden, where he was associated with the German Expressionist movement. He later emigrated to Brazil, where he lived and worked until his death. Celebrated in South America, his work is still little known in the U. S. Documenting the Diaspora... more »
Post-Pop, Post-Pictures
August 22 – September 21, 1997
Highlighting the work of eleven young abstract painters from Chicago, New York and Texas, this exhibition illustrated the current shift in abstraction away from the heroic brushwork and emotional concerns first expressed in the 1950s to painting that is more mundane and mediated because it is more self-consciously culturally informed.... more »
EXIT 7: Seven Artists from Midway Studios
July 10 - August 5, 1997
The work of Constance Bacon, Nicole Been, Mark Clarson, Katie Dowling, Michael Dreeben, Scott Marshall, and Jung Rhee Shim constituted the fourteenth annual Midway Studios graduate exhibition. Through the media of sculpture, painting and photography, these artists explored such issues as fetishism, revising modernism, the social construction of identity and... more »
In the Presence of the Gods: Art from Ancient Sumer in the Collection of the Oriental Institute Museum
July 1, 1997– March 8, 1998
This exhibition displayed over forty artifacts from ancient Sumer, one of the most important city-states of ancient Mesopotamia, located in present-day Iraq. Dating from the third millennium, B.C.E., these objects ranted from stone and metal statuettes of praying priests and worshippers to ritual vessels and ceremonial inlaid plaques. Once adorning... more »
From Blast to Pop: Aspects of Modern British Art 1915-1965
17 April–15 June 1997
Organized from the Smart Museum’s little-known collection of British paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, Blast to Pop explored the complex chronology and diverse artistic traditions of British Modernism. Featuring over one hundred works by important British avant-garde artists such as Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and William Turnbull, the show... more »
Excavating the Smart Museum: (Re)viewing the Classical Greek and Roman Collection
1 April–8 June 1997
The exhibition focused on eighty artifacts from theSmart Museum’s classical Greek and Roman holdings. Students in Professor Pinney’s seminar researched objects ranging from sculpture to coins and then catalogued them according to the themes of death, gender, public space, entertainment, and religion. By examining these objects in light of current... more »
African Affinities/Expressionist Essences: Vincent Smith's Eight Etchings, 1965-1966
7–28 February 1997
Mounted in honor of African-American Heritage Month, this exhibition featured eight etchings made by African-American artist Vincent Smith in 1965–1966 at the height of the civil-rights movement. Mounted alongside African masks and prints by Otto Dix and Max Beckmann, German printmakers who were great influences, Smith’s prints exhibited the stylistic... more »
Then and Now
6 February–16 March 1997
This exhibition offered the University community a comprehensive look at the work of Midway Studios faculty members Judith Brotman, Lynne Brown, Herbert George, Robert Hooper, Vera Klement, Laura Letinsky and Tom Mapp. Recent works by each artist were contrasted with earlier pieces–some from the artists’ graduate school days–to provide a... more »
Trends in Post-War Chicago Art
26 December 1996–16 January 1997
Curated from the Smart Museum’s significant collection, this exhibition explored artistic production in Chicago from 1945 to the present. Represented were artists such as Robert Barnes, Cosmo Campoli, Ruth Duckworth, Leon Golub, Art Green, Richard Hunt, Vera Klement, June Leaf, Jim Nutt, Ed Paschke, Frank Piatek, Hollis Sigler and Ray... more »
The Fragrance of Ink: Korean Literati Paintings of the Chosǒn Dynasty (1392-1910) from the Korea University Museum
10 October 1996–8 December 1997
Comprised of sixty-two ink paintings, including hanging scrolls, album leaves, fans, and screens, the exhibition presented works by some of the most significant literati painters of Korea’s last royal dynasty. Organized jointly by the Korean Studies Institute and the Korea University Museum, the exhibition was circulated by the Smart Museum... more »
Faces of Ancient Egypt: Ancient Egyptian Art from the Oriental Institute Museum
10 September 1996–9 March 1997
The first in a series of collaborative exhibitions with the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute during its renovation and expansion, this show highlighted the Institute’s important Egyptian holdings by examining the role of the human figure within the cultural and religious life of Egyptian civilization. The idealized, abstract quality of... more »
Peter Saul: Art World Portraits
20 August–15 September 1996
This exhibition of fourteen pencil and gouache works revisited a little-known body of work by Austin-based Peter Saul, an innovator of American pop art whose work pushes the limits of acceptability and taste. Created in the early 1970s, Saul’s satirical portraits critique the “superheroes” of the art world including Andy... more »
M.F.A. 1996
11 July–6 August 1996
Ranging from video to painting to photography, the work of Brett bloom, Shawn Calvert, Mark Huddle, David Krause, Piper, Rebecca Ravis, Stephanie Serpick, and L. Mikelle Standbridge, in this thirteenth annual Midway Studios graduate exhibition, explored broad cultural issues and personal histories. Exhibited as an ensemble rather than a showcase... more »
Alyce Frank: Recent Landscapes
2 July–18 August 1996
An exhibition of recent paintings by Alyce Frank (B. A. 1950) was mounted as part of an alumni artists series. A resident of New Mexico, Frank is known for her large canvases of the regional landscape, including a series on the Grand Canyon, painted in brilliant colors reminiscent of German... more »
Peasants and "Primitivism": French Prints from Millet to Gauguin
18 April–9 June 1996
Organized by the Mount Holyoke College Museum and curated by Robert L. Herbert, one of the leading scholars of Impressionism, this exhibition traced the rise of two related types of “primitivism” in nineteenth-century France. The eighty works in the exhibition by artists such as Paul Gauguin, Camille Pissarro, and Jean-François... more »
Drawings from the Collection of The Arts Club of Chicago
19 March–2 June 1996
Through eleven drawings from the permanent collection of The Arts Club, including works by André Derain, Paul Klee, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Isamu Noguchi, and Pablo Picasso, this exhibition documented the collection, exhibition history, and patronage of The Arts Club of Chicago. The drawings, ranging from rapid sketches to highly... more »
Looking to Learn: Visual Pedagogy at the University of Chicago
7 May–9 June 1996
Under the direction of Professors Linda Seidel and Katherine Taylor, this exhibition was organized by graduate and undergraduate students in the University of Chicago’s Department of Art History. Looking to Learn examined the history of the University by addressing the ways in which objects, artifacts, and images have been collected,... more »
Mark Rothko: The Spirit of Myth, Early Paintings from the 1930s and 1940s
18 January–17 March 1996
Providing an in-depth look at the early years of one of the most important American artists of this century, this exhibition highlighted rarely exhibited paintings from the extensive Mark Rothko collection at the National Gallery of Art. Visitors had a unique opportunity to view important phases of Rothko’s development through... more »
The Sculptural Head as Image
12 December 1995–10 March 1996
Organized by Herbert George, Associate Professor, committee on Art and Design at the University of Chicago, this exhibition examined the convention of the portrait head from antiquity to the present through over forty sculptures from the Smart’s permanent collection. Curator: Herbert George, Associate Professor, Committee on Art and Design, University... more »
The Studio Museum in Harlem: Twenty-Five Years of African-American Art
19 October–10 December 1995
This exhibition marked the first national tour of art from the collection of The Studio Museum in Harlem, a premier museum dedicated to the work of Black America and the African Diaspora. Included were works by African-American artists Romare Bearden, Fred Brown, Ed Clark, Herbert Gentry, Sam Gilliam, Richard Hunt,... more »
Woman in the Eyes of Man: Images of Women in Japanese Art
12 September-3 December 1995
Organized by the Smart Museum, in collaboration with DePaul University and the Field Museum, Woman in the Eyes of Man focused on artistic depictions of women throughout Japanese history, exploring a range of idealized feminine types, including the moral paragon, the alluring beauty, and the selfless caregiver. The exhibition featured... more »
M.F.A. 1995
13 July–27 August 1995
Seven artists were represented in the 1995 Master of Fine Arts exhibition: Louis Brandt, Anthony Elms, Marc Fischer, Erik S. Lieber, Morgan Santander, Duncan Webb, and Karen Louise Wilson. Utilizing painting, drawing and photography, the artists presented a wide range of differing visions, techniques and styles. A Brochure published in... more »
Points of View: Selected Works of Art Chosen by the Friends of the Smart Museum
1 March–1 June 1995
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From the Ocean of Painting: India's Popular Painting Traditions, 1589-present
19 January–12 March 1995
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Visions of a Nation: Images of Mexico by Mexican and American Photographers
13 December 1994–5 March 1995
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An Old Master Painting Restored: King David by Girolamo da Santa Croce
30 August–4 December 1994
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MFA Show 1994
10 July–28 August 1994
MFA 1994 brings together a strong group of painters and sculptors. Darlene Kryza, the one photographer, offers fascinating glimpses of herself through the medium of large-format color still-lifes. Works in painting include the rich abstractions of Vera Anna Slawinski, Erica Moiah James’s meditations on her own body, and our resident... more »
John Phillips: Selections from the Series "A Contemporary Odyssey"
5 July–21 August 1994
John Phillips’s series, “A Contemporary Odyssey,” represents a heroic search for self as the artist responds to the story of Odysseus’s ten years of adventure and wandering on the voyage home following a decade of war against the Trojans. Phillips conceives of the ancient Greek myth as “the story of... more »
Hannah Höch, 1889-1978: Collages
12 April–26 June 1994
Hannah Höch, The only female member of the Berlin Dada group, revolutionized the genre of photomontage, the process originated by the Dada artists, of cutting up pre-existing imagery and reassembling it into new, unusual, and often humorous configurations. Like her circle, Höch rejected traditional ideas of “fine art,” choosing instead... more »
The Stage is All the World: The Theatrical Designs of Tanya Moiseiwitsch
12 April–12 June 1994
Tanya Moiseiwitsch spent her childhood in the company of great men—whether it was her father Benno Moiseiwitsch, the great pianist, his colleague, Mark Hambourg, or her step-father John Drinkwater, noted Shakespearean expert. It was in this environment that Tanya discovered and nurtured her talent as a designer of sets, props,... more »
An Eye for Antiquity: Photographs from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. William Knight Zewadski
20 January–13 March 1994
The exhibition encompasses all types of photography taken in Greece and Rome from its inception in 1839 to the present day. The collection of William Knight Zewadski includes snapshots, photo albums, books illustrated with photography, and postcards, in addition to photography produced for purely artistic reasons. The exhibition includes nearly... more »
Vessels of Meaning: Modern British Ceramics
14 December 1993–6 March 1994
Breaking down traditional distinctions between art and industry, modern British potters have looked for inspiration in trends and styles as diverse as Sung Dynasty vessels, Japanese glazing techniques, and hand-building concepts. The correlation of studio ceramics and fine art movements such as Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art has generated substantial... more »
Portrait Prints from Nolde to Dine: Selections from the Joseph P. Shure Collection
3 December 1991–8 March 1992
Joseph P. Shure, an alumnus of the University of Chicago, actively collected works of painting, sculpture, prints, and drawings from a wide range of artists from the early twentieth century northern Expressionists like Emil Nolde to contemporary American figures such as Jack Beal and Alex Katz. This exhibition of a... more »
The Tradition and Influence of the German Woodcut
5 October–12 December 1993
In 1991, the Smart Museum was fortunate to welcome into its collection a gift from the collection of Louis E. Asher: The W.L. Schreiber Woodcuts from Books of the Fifteenth Century, a portfolio published by Weiss and Co. Antiquariat, Munich in 1929. Comprised of 55 woodcut pages from books of... more »
Serials for a Private Sphere: The German Print Portfolio, 1890-1930
5 October–12 December 1993
The German print was influential in the development of the aesthetic, social, and political events of the period 1890-1930. Serials for a Private Sphere: The German Print Portfolio, 1890-1930 provides the first systematic explication of an artform which, created essentially for private ownership rather than public display, generated a new... more »
MFA Show 1993, HPAC
25 July–21 August 1993
The Master of Fine Arts exhibition gives us an opportunity to see together the work of a very interesting group of emerging artists. Several of them share an affinity for the figures, but with results as diverse as Nina Levy’s spectral narrative, Christine Basick’s tormented allusions to the flesh, and... more »
Art from the Persian Courts
18 February–4 April 1993
Persian ideas and sensibilities spread following the Mongol invasions of Iran in the 13th century. Through the lavish patronage of the Ilkhanid, Timurid, Safavid, and Mughal rulers, the arts of the book were elevated to objects of beauty as well as vehicles to express dynastic aspirations and legitimacy. Princes and... more »
Lyonel Feininger
15 December 1992–28 February 1993
American-born early modernist artist Lyonel Feininger is remembered as a leading member of German Expressionism. His illustrations in the 1890s and the early 1900s for German and American newspapers and journals, including the Chicago Tribune, are well known, and the impact of this commercial art on contemporaneous independent paintings, drawings,... more »
Visual Poetry: Brossa/Parra
6 October–13 December 1992
Following in the tradition of such avant-garde artists as Marcel Duchamp and Meret Oppenheim, Catalan artist Joan Brossa and Chilean Nicanor Parra break down boundaries between language and image, mixing genres and combining media to arrive at new forms of expression. Though Brossa and Parra come from different cultural and... more »
The Gray City Unbuilt: Architectural Proposals for the University of Chicago
1 September–6 December 1992
The University of Chicago’s exterior has undergone multiple transformations over its century-long existence. These transformations were the subject of the Smart Museum’s exhibition of Fall 1991, The Gray City: Architectural Drawings of the University of Chicago. Equally interesting, however, are the designs of buildings that for one reason or other,... more »
MFA Show 1992
9 July–30 August 1992
The MFA exhibition at the Smart Museum offers Chicago audiences a preview of a new generation of artists. Three of the four graduates included in this exhibition, Paul Coffey, Philip T. Matsikas, and Paula Melvin, are installation artists and will present distillations of their MFA thesis shows. The fourth graduate,... more »
Jene Highstein: Drawings
16 June–23 August 1992
Early in his career, Jene Highstein was influenced by use of inexpensive or found materials promoted by the Italian Arte Povera movement. His early work was made in cement and steel, materials that require building up, which made the artist’s process an additive one. When Highstein later began to work... more »
Depth Studies: Illustrated Anatomies from Vesalius to Vicq d'Azyr
17 March–7 June 1992
In conjunction with the University of Chicago’s centennial celebration symposium, Imaging the Body: Art and Science in Modern Culture, and Professor Barbara Maria Stafford’s seminar Depth Studies, the Smart Museum has compiled nearly 20 illustrated anatomy texts from the 16th through the 20th centuries. The exhibition explores the diverse ways... more »
Imagining an Irish Past: The Celtic Revival, 1840-1940
5 February–16 June 1992
Following the discovery of the Early Christian Ardagh Chalice, Cross of Cong, and the Tara Brooch, a renewed sense of patriotism and national identity arose in Ireland and inspired numerous contemporary copies of Irish treasures. These works reached the middle classes when retailers such as Liberty’s of London, Tiffany’s and... more »
Multiple Perspectives: Cubism in Chicago Collections
8 October 1991–21 January 1992
After Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque began making Cubist art, the movement grew and developed under the care of other artists who demonstrated the increasing expressive possibilities of Cubism in the post-World War I world. These artists, French artists Albert Gleizes, Henri Laurens, Jean Metzinger, and Jacques Villon, Spaniards Juan... more »
The Gray City: Architectural Drawings of the University of Chicago
27 August–24 November 1991
The stark contrast between the monumental Neo-Classical constructions of “the White City” – the epithet of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition – and the newly-risen Neo-Gothic structures of the fledgling University of Chicago across the midway earned for the imposing gray Indiana limestone buildings the moniker “the Gray City.” The... more »
MFA Show 1991
11 July–25 August 1991
The annual exhibition of work by 14 Master of Fine Arts graduates at the University of Chicago showcases a video installation, a wearable raincoat and boots made of used milk cartons, wood and metal sculptures, photographic assemblage, oil paintings, and mixed media drawings. The artists are Donald Asher, Joanne Berens,... more »
The American Color Print
18 June–18 August 1991
The more than 20 prints in The American Color Print explore how American printmaking encompasses traditional media such as woodcut, screenprinting, and lithography, as well as remarkable experimental and mixed techniques. Some works were printed entirely by the artist on small hand presses, and others are the creative result of... more »
Independent Expressions: Spanish and Mexican Drawings and Sculpture, 1650-1960
30 April–9 June 1991
Independent Expressions considered the diverse and innovative artistic production of Spanish and Mexican artists during the baroque and modern periods. The works exhibited here demonstrate several aspects of the history of Spanish and Mexican culture, and some of the different ways in which artists have chosen to express themselves and... more »
Joseph Hoffmann: Drawings and Objects
20 April–16 June 1991
Joseph Hoffmann founded the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops) in 1903, whose aim was to create high-quality products accessible to a broad spectrum of society. These products ranged in scale from cutlery to architecture. Their conviction was that structure, not ornament, was the essence of good design. More than two-hundred fifty... more »
Scholarly Treasures: Donations in Honor of Harrie A. Vanderstappen
1 March–21 April 1991
The exhibition includes Chinese and Japanese ink paintings from the 16-19th centuries as well as a rare Neolithic Chinese bowl. Professor Harrie A. Vanderstappen, to whom the gifts of these artworks has been dedicated, delivered a lecture in connection with the exhibition.... more »
Cross Sections II
17 January–17 March 1991
This year, the Smart Museum unveiled the first handbook to the galleries, A Guide to the Collection, in conjunction with the exhibition Cross Sections II. The exhibition showcases gifts to the Museum over the last three years, including a small etching by Rembrandt van Rijn, nineteenth-century photographs by the Bisson... more »
Between Mother and Goddess: Renaissance and Baroque Views of Women
8 January–24 February 1991
During the Renaissance and baroque periods, paintings and prints provided a powerful vehicle for propagating the contemporary understanding of women’s bodies as the objects of male delectation and ownership. Classical goddesses such as Venus, Circe, and Flora, as well as nymphs, muses, and graces, appear in provocative poses and sheer... more »
Leaves from the Bodhi Tree
9 October–2 December 1990
Since the time of Buddha’s enlightenment in the sixth century, B. C. countless pious visitors to Bodh Gaya have departed from the site carrying with them dark, shining leaves from the sacred bodhi tree. Safeguarded in pockets, books, scraps of cloth, and other makeshift presses, these precious treasures are venerated... more »
Devotion and Performance: Traditional Uses of Visual Form in South Asia
9 October–16 December 1990
At devotional centers in both North and South India, paintings on paper and small devotional images were produced for sale to devotees. Often quickly and cheaply executed, these works nonetheless retained the essential iconography thereby allowing viewers easy identification of the deities represented. Important Hindu temples at Tanjore and Mudrai,... more »
MFA Show
12 July–26 August 1990
Included in this year’s Master of Fine Arts exhibition of graduating students at Midway Studios, University of Chicago’s Visual Arts Department, are more than two-dozen paintings, drawings, sculpture, and installations by seven artists: Gary Cannone, Jill Glick, Raina Grigg, Kathy Rice, Brian Ritchard, Deb Vandenbroucke, and Libby Wadsworth. Within this... more »
Print Exhibition: The Drawn Image
11 July–25 August 1990
Since the Renaissance, drawing in the West has held a significant place in the creative process. Drawing’s earliest iteration was as an ancillary aid to painting, sculpture, and architecture. During the 19th century, drawing, and the related category of watercolor, gained independence and esteem as a worthy technique in its... more »
Sigmund Freud's Antiquities: Fragments of a Buried Past
19 April–17 June 1990
Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud spent a lifetime amassing a collection of antiquities, namely vases, fragments of sculpture, and figurines. He repeatedly compared archaeology to the study of the human psyche, which according to his method, had to be excavated layer by layer until the deepest and most trenchant elements were unearthed... more »
"A Love" by Max Klinger
4 April–1 July 1990
The graphic cycle A Love (Eine Liebe) by Max Klinger, recounts the plight of a young upper-class woman who becomes involved in an amorous affair. Despite her dream of happiness, the woman is overcome with shame and guilt, and finally, dies in childbirth. Paralleling the main story, the artist interjects... more »
Views of Rome: Drawings and Watercolors from the Collection of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
18 January–18 March 1990
Views of Rome, a collection of drawings and watercolors depicting the Eternal City at different times during its existence, was formed nearly a century ago by Thomas Ashby. After attending Oxford, Ashby established himself in Rome as a classical scholar. For his research, Ashby sought out historical views of Rome;... more »
Print Exhibition: Eighteenth-Century Views of Rome
17 January–10 April 1990
The demand from English, French, and German travelers and amateur antiquarians for vedute, or views, of Rome, which had begun as early as the 16th century, increased dramatically by the 1750s after the discovery and excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Guiseppe Vasi responded to the situation by creating great expansive... more »
Ritual and Reverence: Chinese Art at the University of Chicago
10 October–3 December 1989
The exhibition centered around the substantial holdings of Chinese art at the University of Chicago. The collection which originated during the first decade of the University’s existence, was augmented by the gift of Professor and Mrs. Herrlee Creel of Chinese bronze-age objects. The study collection grew further when Father Harrie... more »
Print Exhibition: French 19th Century Photography of Art
17 July–31 August 1989
Between 1850 and 1870 in France, photographs of art and architecture gained prominence as Paris was transformed under Baron von Haussmann’s modernization. Additionally, as it became more popular to tour Europe to view fine art and ancient structures, demand increased for photo albums as souvenirs and as substitutes for personal... more »
MFA Show 1989
16 July–27 August 1989
The exhibition of work by Master of Fine Arts students at Midway Studios, at the University of Chicago included work by Tom Fahsbender, Yvonne Koble, Ben Portis, Karen J. Reimer, and Brian Smith. ... more »
Nineteenth Century Polish Painting: Valor, Memory and Dreams
13 April–18 June 1989
From 1772 until 1918, Poland did not exist as an independent state. Because of the superior power of neighboring Austria, Russia, and Prussia, Poland was conquered and partitioned several times. The longing felt by the Polish people for a sense of national identity naturally permeated the art produced during the... more »
Print Exhibition: Traditions of Landscape in 19th Century Europe
13 April–9 July 1989
In conjunction with the exhibition Nineteenth Century Polish Painting: Valor, Memory, and Dreams, prints from the Smart Museum’s permanent collection have been put in display that exhibit the influence of foreign artists and movements on the production of Polish landscapes. This group of drawings represents some of the most influential... more »
Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia
25 January–12 March 1989
For more than 30,000 years, Australia’s Aboriginal societies have used their colorful and complex art to express the individual experiences and spiritual values of a culture rich in mythology and ritual. “The Dreaming” refers to highly symbolic Aboriginal rituals and beliefs involving ancestral beings. The “Dreaming” itself is symbolic of... more »
From Ukiyo-e to Sosaku Hanga (Japanese Prints of Hokusai, Hiroshige and Munakata)
January–10 April 1989
The Ukiyo-e print developed in Japan during the Edo Period (1603-1868), and was characterized by the depiction of the transient world of pleasure and amusement. The artists of the Ukiyo-e concentrated on three subjects: women of the entertainment districts, actors of the Kabuki theater, and landscape and life of the... more »
Print Exhibition: A Restless and Desperate Art (German Prints of the 1920s
3 November 1988–January 1989
One major source of optimism in Germany at the end of World War I was due largely to workers’ strikes, seen by the greater public as the beginning of sweeping social change. However, when the strikes were effectively put down by the government, that optimism quickly dissipated, leaving in its... more »
Print Exhibition: Zeami, Masakasu Yamazaki, Mitsuru Ishii
21–27 October 1988
Zeami, a play by Masakazu Yamazaki, is about the life story of legendary 15th century Japanese theater actor, Noh, who possessed great command of the stage and usually found himself at the center of court intrigue. The play was first presented in 1955 where it won the Kishida Award for... more »
The Charged Image: Political Satire in the Age of Daumier
4 October–4 December 1988
Incited by the violent events of the July Revolution, and by the incompetence, corruption, and impotence of the July Monarchy headed by King Louis-Philippe, artists like Honoré Daumier, Gerard Grandville, and Charles-Joseph Travies de Villiers quickly turned the freedom granted to the press by the king against him. Through journals... more »
MFA Show 1988
7 July–28 August 1988
The annual exhibition of work by Master of Fine Arts graduates of Midway Studios, University of Chicago, displayed the work of five artists. The show includes 20 pieces, featuring prints, works on paper, paintings, and sculpture by artists Kevin Cooney, Marilyn Derwenskus, Mary Markey, Bonita McLaughlin, and John Santoro. ... more »
John Graham: Artist and Avatar
14 April –12 June 1988
John Graham, also known as Ivan Dombrowski, Ivan Dabrowsky, John G. Dowbrowski, and Ioannus Magus, is a little-known but fascinating figure in the development of American Modernism. He was a painter, draftsman, writer, advisor, and collector, and inspired many artists associated with the “New York School” in the 1940s and... more »
Print Exhibition: From the American Scene to Abstract Expressionism
14 April–12 June 1988
Prints by several artists in John Graham’s circle were displayed in coordination with the exhibition Artist and Avatar. In 1920, Graham brought to America a new philosophical experience connected to European Modernism as well as an intense interest in psychological theory. He would go on to share his knowledge with... more »
The Aura of Neo-Impressionism
4 January–6 March 1988
Inspired by the example and ideas of Georges Seurat, the late nineteenth century French and Belgian artists who have come to be described as the Neo-Impressionists bridged the period between the discoveries of the Impressionists and the daring experiments of the early twentieth-century Fauvists and Cubists. Against the background of... more »
Post-Impressionist Prints
4 January–6 March 1988
The period from 1886, the date of the last Impressionist exhibition, until the turn of the century, marked a revival of the woodcut process of printmaking, and a re-evaluation of the lithograph. The pervasive philosophical force in the subject matter of the period aligned with Symbolism as it emerged and... more »
Blossoms from the Desert: Three Centuries of Rajput Painting
6 October–6 December 1987
The Rajput were the ruling Indian warrior class who divided their territory into small princely states. Although there are broad stylistic differences in the paintings produced by these separate states, they have important features in common, including their use of vivid colors and exclusive use of religious subject matter. An... more »
Print Exhibition: Illinois Prints, 1950-1987
6 October–6 December 1987
Vera Berdich, Phyllis Bramson, Roland Ginzel, Leon Golub, Richard Hull, Ellen Lanyon, June Leaf, and Dan Ramirez, represent a sampling of the diversity of printmaking in Illinois since World War II. While these artists are outside the tradition of Chicago Imagism themselves, each of them lived in Chicago at one... more »
The Chicago Imagist Print: Ten Artists' Works, 1958-1987
4 October–6 December 1987
Roger Brown, Art Green, Philip Hanson, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Ed Paschke, Christina Ramberg, Suellen Rocca, Barbara Rossi, and Karl Wirsum, who were students together at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago created a visual style that came to be known as Chicago Imagism. Chicago Imagism is characterized... more »
Print and Drawing Exhibition: Survey of Master Prints
Autumn 1987
This exhibition of prints ranging from the 16th through the 20th centuries featured artists from all regions of Europe, including Albrecht Dürer, Parmigianino, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jacques Callot, William Hogarth, Francisco Goya, Eugene Delacroix, Pablo Picasso, and Käthe Kollwitz. The exhibition was coordinated with Professor Edward Maser’s... more »
MFA Show 1987
16 July–30 August 1987
Eleven Master of Fine Arts graduates of Midway Studios of the University of Chicago exhibited their work in the annual MFA Show. The artists on view are Anne Binford, John Brunetti, Elizabeth Carrera, Koni Fujiwara, Dan K. Harris, Johnna Marcil, Tom Morris, Ann Schaefer, Julie Schnatz, J. Vincent Shine, and... more »
Post-war Czechoslovakian Printmakers in the Permanent Collection
15 July–30 August 1987
During and after World War II, cultural ties between the West and Czechoslovakia were cut, with the result that many of Czechoslovakia’s artists did not benefit from the sweeping changes in the mainstream of modern art during the 1940s and 1950s. However, those times were re-established in the mid-1960s by... more »
EV, An Evocation of Ottoman Turkey
21 June–16 August 1987
EV, An Evocation of Ottoman Turkey, is designed to evoke the spirit of Istanbul, from two differing points of view; European topographical images of the city from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and the Turkish self-image projected by the illustrations in one famous manuscript in the Topkapi Sarayi Palace... more »
Tradition and Conflict: Images of a Turbulent Decade, 1963-1973
15 May–30 June 1987
This exhibition of more than 80 paintings, photographs, and sculpture portraying the Civil Rights Movement features more than 50 artists, whose works were profoundly affected by the turmoil and unrest that characterized the Sixties. The exhibit also includes anti-war and feminist artists whose own movements were influenced by the ideals... more »
Print Exhibition: La Caricature and the French July Monarchy
15 May–30 June 1987
La Caricature, a journal founded by Charles Philipon emerged on November 4, 1830 in response to the freedom of the press promised by King Louis-Philippe and the July Monarchy. Philipon recognized the value of caricature in conveying his political views and he chose the medium of lithography, invented as recently... more »
Japanese Quest for a New Vision: The Impact of Visiting Chinese Painters, 1600-1900
26 March–3 May 1987
Japanese Quest for a New Vision: The Impact of Visiting Chinese Painters 1600-1900 explored the cultural interaction between China and Japan in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the 18th century, a growing number of artists outside the traditional painting schools sought new forms of artistic expressions. Though trade sanctions... more »
Russia, The Land, The People: Russian Painting, 1850-1910
22 January–8 March 1987
The exhibition consisted of more than sixty canvases from the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century drawn from two major museums of the USSR – the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the State Russian Museum in Leningrad. Embodied in these paintings are... more »
Print Exhibition: Prints by Käthe Kollwitz, 1919-1938
22 January–8 March 1987
Käthe Kollwitz saw art as a means to an end, never as art for art’s sake. She hoped that her work, executed in the democratic medium of the inexpensive large-edition print, would evoke social change in her native Germany. Many of her works were inspired by specific social and often... more »
Cross Sections: Recent Additions to the Collection
9 October–7 December 1986
Over the past two years, 21 donors have given or loaned over 300 works ranging from the classical to the contemporary. On display in this exhibition of a selection of those gifts were oil and watercolor paintings, lithographs, engravings, etchings, drawings, sculpture, ceramics, and decorative arts by 35 artists including... more »
Print Exhibition: Jan Wiegers' Expressionist Prints
8 October–7 December 1986
Jan Wiegers was a Dutch painter, printmaker, and founder of the artists’ association, De Ploeg (The Plough), in Groningen. For health reasons, Wiegers briefly visited Switzerland, where he met and worked with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Expressionist draftsman, painter, and printmaker. Kirchner’s influence was visible on Wiegers’ works after his return... more »
MFA Show 1986
16 July–31 August 1986
Twenty works by the eight graduating Master of Fine Arts students at Midway Studios, University of Chicago, represent a range of formal and expressive styles. Ellen Campbell, Patricia Deegan, Helen Jones, Susanna Kiluk, Walter Myers, Dan Peterman, Kenneth Shaw, and Michael Strong display a broad range of styles from the... more »
Prints of Barnett Newman
26 March–11 May 1986
Barnett Newman is best known for his large, monochromatic paintings but began to make prints after the death of his brother. His prints evoke a sense of spirituality through color and composition while presenting the duality that runs throughout all of his work, the juxtaposition of rough and smooth, spontaneous... more »
Jean Metzinger in Retrospect
23 January–9 March 1986
Jean Metzinger was primarily known for co-authoring the first treatise on Cubism, De Cubisme, published with Albert Gleizes, in 1912. This exhibition, featuring more than 50 paintings and drawings, is the first to examine Metzinger’s development as a Cubist rather than merely focusing on his work in the treatise. The... more »
Print Exhibition: Along the Lines of Impressionism
23 January–9 March 1986
Impressionist artists were concerned with capturing the ephemeral effects of natural light on objects; they sought to catch the “impression” of the moment. All Impressionists used drawings in some way, despite their espousal of painting outdoors, “en plein air.” Some artists sketched as an exercise, or as a means to... more »
Blue and White: Chinese Porcelain and its Impact on the Western World
3 October–1 December 1985
Blue and white porcelain of the Yuan and Ming dynasties is noted for its technical perfection, vibrant color and exotic designs, which craftsmen around the world have attempted to copy, ultimately leading to new designs and technical innovation. Blue and White: Chinese Porcelain and its Impact on the Western World... more »
Victors and Victims: Artists’ Responses to War from Antiquity through the Vietnam Era
11 July–1 September 1985
The exhibition examined war as artistic subject matter throughout history. The works, ranging from the heroic images of antiquity, to the romantic glorification of the Napoleonic warrior, to the victims and devastation of modern warfare, portray both the artistic conventions as well as the social and political circumstances of a... more »
MFA Show 1985
11 July–1 September 1985
The MFA Show was the culmination nine students’ work towards the degree of Master of Fine Arts at The University of Chicago’s Midway Studios. Wendy Norris, Jane Barrett, Roger Hughes, Anthony Plaut, Ruth Willett, John Dunn, Julia Dupre, Margaret Lass-Gardiner, and Hugh Barlow exhibited their paintings, drawings, sculpture, prints and... more »
Print Exhibition: Chiaroscuro Woodcuts: Color and Reproduction
May–2 September 1985
The chiaroscuro woodcut was the first of the graphic arts to use colored inks to simulate the effects of light and shadow – chiaroscuro. The technique was used most often to reproduce famous or innovative drawings and paintings for distribution to a wider public. Today, these prints are recognized for... more »
Alumni Who Collect II: Sculpture from 1600 to the Present
18 April–16 June 1985
The exhibition, the second in a series featuring alumni collections, celebrates the impressive commitment and contribution to the visual arts made by the University of Chicago and its graduates. Approximately 30 sculptures by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Joseph Cornell, Edgar Degas, Auguste Rodin, Aristide Maillol, Joan Miró, and Alberto... more »
Art of the Insane: Selected Works from the Prinzhorn Collection
14 March–21 April 1985
Throughout his career, Dr. Hans Prinzhorn of the University of Heidelberg Psychiatric Clinic collected artworks created by institutionalized patients at the turn of the 20th century in Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. These works greatly influenced the psychiatric perception of mental illness as well as European avant¬–garde art.... more »
Concentrations in the Collection: European and American Decorative Arts
10 January–17 March 1985
From the Italian Renaissance, where ceramics and silver embellished royal palaces to turn of the century America where Tiffany vases decorated the homes of high society, the decorative arts have always reflected the aesthetic sensibilities of particular times and places. Concentrations in the Collection: European and American Decorative Arts was... more »
Frank Lloyd Wright at the University of Chicago
4 October–2 December 1984
In honor of the 75th anniversary of the construction of the Frederick C. Robie House, the Smart Museum has put on display 18 pieces of furniture and 5 works on paper by Frank Lloyd Wright, many of which have never been publicly exhibited. The Robie House, which is now owned... more »
Jean Dubuffet: 40 Years of His Art
4 October–2 December 1984
Jean Dubuffet, one of the pre-eminent post-war European artists, is associated with an artistic style that includes highly textured canvases, expressive figures, and a loose technique notably drawn from artworks by children and the insane. This exhibition at the Smart Museum was organized to coincide with the unveiling of a... more »
The Illustrator as Storyteller
4 October–2 December 1984
Marcia Brown is the only three-time winner of the Caldecott Medal for excellent illustration of children’s books. The Illustrator as Storyteller featured 15 prints, drawings, and collages by Brown from her stories Puss in Boots, Cinderella, Once a Mouse, Shadow, Dick Whittington’s Cat, and Stone Soup. These works were borrowed... more »
Modern Ceramics from the Collection: 100 Years of Tradition and Innovation
18 July–26 August 1984
Modern Ceramics from the Collection centered on the past 100 years of developments in ceramic production and decoration. The exhibition was taken from the Smart’s permanent collection and featured examples from the revival styles of the 19th century, the Art Nouveau and Vienna Moderne styles, and the personal styles of... more »
MFA Exhibition 1984
18 July–26 August 1984
The show featured paintings, drawings, sculpture, and installations by seven emerging artists graduating with the degree of Master of Fine Arts from the University. ... more »
An Alle Künstler! War-Revolution-Weimar: German Expressionist Prints, Drawings, Posters and Periodicals from the Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation
20 May–1 July 1984
The Smart Museum of Art and the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago co-sponsored a series of events based on German Expressionism. The exhibition at the Smart, An Alle Kunstler! War-Revolution-Weimar: German Expressionist Prints, Drawings, Poster and Periodicals from the Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation, presents a survey of work... more »
Photography of the Weimar Republic
20 May–1 July 1984
A selection of photographic images organized by the Goethe Institute of Chicago, Photography of the Weimar Republic, was planned in cooperation with the other German Expressionist events at the Smart Museum and the Renaissance Society. ... more »
Horst Antes
20 May–1 July 1984
A mini-exhibition of prints by the contemporary German artist, Horst Antes, 1936–, was on display at the Smart Gallery through July 1, as a complement to the German Expressionist and Neo-Expressionist exhibitions... more »
The Balloon: A Bicentennial Exhibition
15 March–29 April 1984
Following the first balloon flight in 1783 in Paris, balloon imagery emerged everywhere: in art, satire, fashion, and decorative objects such as doorknobs, chairs, fabric, buttons, fans, and medallions. The balloon symbolized progress, scientific triumph, and romance. The exhibition featured 150 prints and decorative objects, dating from 1783–1815, that reveal... more »
Fernand Khnopff and the Belgian Avant-Garde
5 January–26 February 1984
Fernand Khnopff, a leading figure in the International Symbolist movement of the 19th century, founded his work on the theory that emotion and introspection are the basis for aesthetic experiences. He creates symbols and allegories for a variety of such existential themes as time, fate, religion, sexuality, art, and death... more »
New Image/Pattern and Decoration from the Morton G. Neumann Family Collection
6 October–4 December 1983
New Image/Pattern and Decoration highlighted a variety of avant-garde paintings collected by a Chicago family, demonstrating the important role played by private collections in the creation of artistic styles and trends. The exhibition explores two distinctive sensibilities that have developed, in part, as reactions to the stark minimalist or non-figurative... more »
Saul Steinberg: Drawings and Watercolors from the Hallmark Collection and The American Comic Strip
20 July–31 August 1983
Saul Steinberg, career cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine, has 25 original drawings from the 1950s and 1960s on display at the Gallery. The drawings, which combine fine art complexity with cartoon whimsy, were originally purchased by the Hallmark Company for greeting card and calendar design. The accompanying exhibition, The... more »
Max Ernst: Books and Graphic Work
12 May–15 June 1983
Max Ernst, German Surrealist and Dadaist, is best recognized for his dissonant images of larger-than-life objects and human bodies with animal heads. He influenced younger Surrealist artists like Jean Dubuffet, Salvador Dali, and René Magritte. He was also an accomplished printmaker, and more than 200 pieces of his graphic work... more »
Medieval and Renaissance Ceramics from the Kassebaum Collection
10 March–24 April 1983
The Kassebaum collection, which consists of over 400 ceramics, has been assembled over the past several decades by John Phillip Kassebaum, Honorary Curator of Ceramics at the Helen Foreman Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas, and is regarded as the foremost private collection of ceramics in the... more »
Poetry on the Wind: The Art of Chinese Folding Fans from the Ming and Ch’ing Dynasties
6 January–20 February 1983
The Chinese fan is a genre to itself. Fans were painted by masters of the technique and are embellished with gold leaf paper, paintings of landscapes, rocks, figures, and flowers, and are often complemented by elaborate calligraphy. The exhibition of 74 fans from the 15th through the 18th centuries at... more »
Tulips, Arabesques and Turbans: Decorative Arts from the Ottoman Empire,
7 October–5 December 1982
Tulips, Arabesques, and Turbans: Decorative Arts from the Ottoman Empire consists of ceramics, metalware, textiles, paintings, and calligraphy from the 16th and 17th centuries, when Turkish artistic culture was at its peak. The bold and monumental style of this period, strong in color and vigorous in design, is clearly apparent... more »
A Selection from the Mary and Earle Ludgin Collection
14 July–31 August 1982
Earle Ludgin had many ties to the University of Chicago. He was a Life Trustee, served on various Visiting Committees, including the Visiting Committee for the Visual Arts, and with his wife, Mary, amassed a large collection of paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture which was recently bequeathed to the Smart... more »
Benton's Bentons: Selections from the Thomas Hart Benton and Rita P. Benton Trusts
3 June–4 July 1982
American artist Thomas Hart Benton’s career spanned nearly 7 decades, each of which is represented in the Smart exhibition, Benton’s Bentons. The show includes paintings and drawings of subjects ranging from portraits, to landscapes, to scenes of American life, to abstract works. Curator: The Spencer Art Museum at the University... more »
Alumni Who Collect I: Drawings from the 16th Century to the Present
18 March–16 May 1982
This first of several Alumni Who Collect exhibitions features drawings from the 16th century to the present and represents more than 70 artists including Eugene Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Paul Klee, and Willem de Kooning. These generous alumni include museum directors, curators, art historians, critics, and dealers such as Dennis Adrian,... more »
A Masterpiece Close-up: The Transfiguration of Raphael
14 January–28 February 1982
The Transfiguration (1520), a painting that is perhaps Raphael’s final masterpiece, exists now in a fragile and damaged state, and is unable to ever leave its permanent home in the Vatican Museums for outside exhibition. This provides a huge dilemma for teachers and students of art history, who are forced... more »
Kandinsky Watercolors: A Selection from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Hilla von Rebay Foundation
15 October–29 November 1981
The exhibition of watercolors by Russian-born Wassily Kandinsky, painted between 1911 and 1940, included many that never have been exhibited before. The exhibition traces Kandinsky’s art through his watercolors, as the artist moved from literal subject matter to abstraction. It also provides a comparison to his better-known work in oils.... more »
Roma Resurgens: Papal Medals from the Age of the Baroque
1 July–9 August 1981
Papal medals served as great instruments of propaganda during the great Catholic revival following the schism created by the Protestant Reformation. The medals depict on one side a portrait of the current pope, and on the other, an idealized heroic image of a papal act. The images were meant to... more »
The Earthly Chimera and the Femme Fatale: Fear of Women in Nineteenth Century Art
20 May–21 June 1981
As women gained more and more political and social freedom in the 19th century, fear of their increased power spawned a new genre of literature and art. Images of woman as femme fatale and as chimera, that mythical beast who threatened men with evil and seductive powers, emerged in works... more »
Drawings by Johann Michael Rottmayr (1654-1730)
23 October–14 December 1980
Edward A. Maser, Director of the Smart Museum and Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Chicago, is an expert on the German and Austrian Baroque periods. The exhibition Drawings by Johann Michael Rottmayr is the result of his continued study of that painter and his contemporaries.... more »
European and American Cubism from the John L. Strauss Loan Collection and the Permanent Collection
9 July–15 October 1980
Cubism is typically associated with two influential artists: Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. But these two artists, while instrumental in Cubism’s development, were hardly the only practitioners. The Smart Museum was fortunate enough to borrow 35 paintings, drawings, and sculpture from the John L. Strauss Collection to highlight these other... more »
Joan Miró: The Development of a Sign Language
15 May–18 June 1980
Sidra Stich, Washington University in St. Louis Professor of Art and Archaeology, was the first to discover a connection between Surrealist Joan Miró’s work and pre-historic cave drawings. Professor Stich organized this exhibition of 45 of Miró’s paintings, drawings, and sculptures from 1924-1956 around that theme. The exhibition is assembled... more »
Master Prints from Landfall Press
13 March–27 April 1980
The Landfall Press of Chicago publishes etchings, aquatints, and lithographs, which were the specific focus of this exhibition. Those artists who have used the Landfall Press include Robert Arneson, Ed Paschke, William Wiley, Christo, Philip Pearlstein, and Jack Tworkov, all of whom are represented in this exhibition. The exhibition is... more »
Vienna Moderne: 1898-1914
10 January–24 February 1980
At the turn of the 20th century, several artists banded together to bring Art Nouveau to the Viennese artistic community. Led by painter Gustav Klimt and architect Otto Wagner, the Vienna Secession, transformed the fine and decorative arts. The exhibition at the Smart Museum featured works by these and other... more »
Abstract Expressionism: A Tribute to Harold Rosenberg
10 October–24 November 1979
Harold Rosenberg, art critic, author, and philosopher, published in many magazines, most notably the New Yorker during his long career. He also served as a University of Chicago professor in the Department of Art and on the Committee on Social Thought. In this exhibition of thirty Abstract Expressionist paintings and... more »
The Art of Russia: 1800-1850
18 May–24 June 1979
The exhibition is comprised of 154 paintings, drawings, prints, watercolors, and examples of the decorative arts loaned from The Hermitage, the Russian State Museum in Leningrad, and the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow. A multitude of styles and trends are represented in the exhibition including pre-Impressionist landscapes by Aleksei Venetsianov, satirical... more »
Jackson Pollock: New Found Works
12 March–6 May 1979
Jackson Pollock, who is best known for his monumental “drip” paintings, also created other, smaller works throughout his career. This exhibition included over 100 of these works, many of which were being exhibited for the first time. Most of the objects in the exhibition were drawings, but there were also... more »
The Decorative Designs of Frank Lloyd Wright
10 January–25 February 1979
Frank Lloyd Wright decorated the Frederick C. Robie House in Hyde Park to match his architectural plans. His aesthetic interests in the design and arrangement of architectural ornament, furniture, windows, and decorative accessories are the subject of the Smart Museum exhibition. The objects span the breadth of his career, which... more »
Alderman Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery
4 October–26 November 1978
Alderman Boydell, 18th century British patron and publisher, collected and commissioned Shakespearean-themed paintings from England’s most prominent artists. The original paintings by Benjamin West, Henry Fuseli, George Romney, Joshua Reynolds, and Angelika Kauffmann, among others, were copied as engravings and sold by subscription to middle-class Britons. The original paintings hung... more »
German and Austrian Painting of the Eighteenth Century
20 April–11 June 1978
This exhibition of 41 paintings and drawings from Central Europe is the first of its kind in Chicago, and the majority of the objects have never been displayed or reproduced before. The show includes paintings by the major Central European artists Johann Michael Rottmayr, Franz Anton Maulbertsch, and Anton Raphael... more »
Artists of the Committee on Art and Design
8 March–9 April 1978
Seven faculty members from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Art and Design, including Kanani Bell, Vera Klement, Thomas Mapp, Robert Peters, Richard Shiff, Joel Snyder, and Laura Volkerding presented their own work in an exhibition at the Smart Museum. The Committee was formed in 1974 to encourage interdisciplinary study... more »
Hsieh Shih-ch'ên: A Ming Dynasty Painter Reinterprets the Past
11 January–26 February 1978
The exhibition includes thirty-three paintings by the 16th century Chinese artist, Hsieh Shih-ch’en, which demonstrate the special character of the Ming Dynasty. They display a wide variety of styles, subjects, and media and include hanging scrolls, hand scrolls, album leaves, and fan paintings. Landscape painting dominates Hsieh Shih-ch’en’s work, but... more »
Artists View the Law in the Twentieth Century
5 October–27 November 1977
This exhibition commemorates the seventy-fifth anniversary of the University of Chicago Law School and includes paintings, drawings, sculpture, prints, and photographs that deal with an evolving public perception of the law during the past seventy-five years. These works range from Kenyon Cox’s Reign of Law made for the New York... more »
Contemporary Japanese Prints from the Oliver Statler Collection
13 July–28 August, 1977
This marks the first public exhibition of more than eighty prints from the Oliver Statler Collection of the Smart Museum of Art. This collection showcases fourteen of Japan’s most prominent contemporary printmakers including Hiratsuka Un’ichi, Saito Kiyoshi and Yamaguchi Gen. The prints were presented to Mr. Statler, a professor at... more »
Rodin's Burghers of Calais from The Cantor, Fitzgerald Collection
11 May–19 June 1977
Auguste Rodin’s monumental sculpture, The Burghers of Calais, is the final result of multiple studies also done in bronze, 18 of which are now in the Cantor, Fitzgerald Collection in Beverly Hills, California. these objects, which are accompanied by descriptive photographs, detail how Rodin was able to design and construct... more »
Paintings, Drawings and Prints by William Russell Flint, R. A. (1880-1969)
May–June 1977
This collection of works by noted Scottish painter William Russell Flint reveals the broad range of the artist’s talents and enriches the Gallery’s collections with prime examples of the work of this famous academician of the first half of the twentieth century. Curator: Jill L. Thomas, graduate student intern Funding... more »
The Trained Eye: The Art Historian as Photographer
9 March–1 May 1977
In teaching the history of art, we are often bound by the constraints of reproductions and facsimiles of the original images or objects. Though this type of photography is usually intended to be representative, the subjectivities and inclinations of the photographer invariably plays a part. These difficulties and advantages are... more »
New Acquisition by Mark Rothko
March 1977
The Smart Museum acquired a large painting by Mark Rothko as the result of a recent gift of Mrs. Albert D. Lasker, who acquired the painting from the artist himself. Curator and Catalogue: Russell Brown, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Art ... more »
Cleveland Tuti-Nama Manuscript: Origins of Mughal Painting
11 January–27 February 1977
The Tuti-Nama manuscript is the best representation of the formative stages of the Mughal style, which originated at the Emperor Akbar’s court, where Persian and Indian painters gathered and their different traditions merged. Professor Pramod Chandra has published on the Tuti-Nama Manuscript, which follows in the same literary tradition as... more »
Documentary Photograph as a Work of Art: American Photographs 1860-1876
13 October–12 December 1976
The art and science of photography was utilized during the Civil War and immediately afterwards to report on the progress of military campaigns and westward expansion. Even at this early moment when the purpose of photography was largely reportorial, photographers like Matthew Brady, Alexander Gardner, Timothy O’Sullivan, George Bernard, and... more »
Geometric Abstract Art from the Lillian H. Florsheim Foundation
14 July– 29 August 1976
The exhibition showcases twenty-three paintings and one sculpture from the private collection of Lillian H. Florsheim. These works represent geometric abstract art from 1929 to 1965 including Russian constructivists, de Stijl, the Bauhaus, and “Op Art” created by such recognized artists as Frank Kupka, George Vantongerloo, Kurt Schwitters, Robert Delaunay,... more »
Drawings and Watercolors of the Sixteenth through Twentieth Centuries from the Bequest of Joseph Halle Schaffner
31 March–12 June 1976
These drawings and watercolors range in date from the mid sixteenth to the mid twentieth century and include works by Guercino, Polidoro da Caravaggio, Thomas Gainsborough, John Marin, Joan Miró, and Aristide Maillol. Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Halle Schaffner collected these works over a number of years, and bequeathed them... more »
The American Presidency in Political Cartoons 1776-1976
12 May–27 June, 1976
American political cartoons represent 200 years of popular opinion of the presidency and the men who have held the office. The exhibition explores the changes and shifts in that popular opinion through Federal Period broadsheets, 19th century lithographs, and 20th century newspaper cartoons by such notable artists as Thomas Nast,... more »
"A Concept: 1 Million Marks" by Sandra Straus
12 May–27 June 1976
The impetus for this series of works came from in a homework assignment for a sixth grade Social Studies class at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. The students were asked to make one million marks to help them understand what ‘one million’ really means. When Sandra Straus heard of... more »
Earth, Water, Fire: Classical Mediterranean Ceramics
31 March–3 May 1976
Earth, Water, Fire: Classical Mediterranean Ceramics brings together more than 120 representative works from the University’s Classical Collection including glazed and un-glazed Greek, Roman, Etruscan, and Cypriote urns, lamps, and dishes. Most of the pieces have never before been on display, though most of them have been part of the... more »
Drawings by Henry Moore from the Joel Starrels, Jr. Memorial Collection
21 January–15 March 1976
These drawings by Henry Moore range from the 1920s to the 1950s and represent important typological shifts in the artist’s work. This exhibition includes figure and sculpture studies in addition to several stand-alone works that are both technically complex and highly finished. The collection of drawings was a gift to... more »
Dürer Through Other Eyes
21 January–15 March 1976
This exhibition includes thirty-six original engravings and woodcuts by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer and forty-eight copies after Dürer dating from the 16th through the 18th centuries. The copies were conceived not as forgeries of Dürer’s work, but in order to satisfy the great public demand for the master’s... more »
A New Acquisition: Milo of Croton by Il Pordenone
21 January–15 March 1976
This important Italian Renaissance painting was recently acquired through the effort of Professor Charles E. Cohen of the Department of Art for the Smart Museum’s Permanent Collection. The painting was subsequently cleaned, restored and exhibited along with photographs of other significant and historically relevant works of art. This acquisition, restoration,... more »
Contemporary Art from the Robert B. Mayer Collection
21 January–15 March 1976
Robert and Beatrice Mayer spent a lifetime amassing heir very sizeable collection of Contemporary Art. Upon her husband’s death, Mrs. Mayer distributed among several institutions paintings, drawings, and prints as long-term loans. The pieces chosen by the Department of Art and the Smart Museum staff from the Mayer collection included... more »
Italian Renaissance Prints by the Lesser Known Engravers Between the Times of Mantegrat and Marcantonio
5 November–14 December 1975
Printmaking emerged and evolved during the Renaissance through the works and innovations of artists like Cristofano Robetta, Zoan Andrea, Giovanni Pietro da Birago, Giovanni Antonio da Brescia and Benedetto Montagna of Vicenza. This exhibition demonstrated the differences between the Florentine and Manutan brands of printmaking as well as the changes... more »
Modern French Painting from the Alex J. Hillman Family Foundation
9 October–15 December 1975
Alex Hillman, an alumnus of the College and the Law School of the University of Chicago, lent to the Smart Museum paintings by Auguste Renoir, Paul Cezanne, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and Fernand Leger and a drawing by Georges Seurat. Funding for the exhibition was provided by the Hillman Family Foundation.... more »
Photographs by Aaron Siskind in Hommage to Franz Kline
5 October–1 November 1975
In his work, Aaron Siskind explores the importance of friendship between individuals as well as the larger concept of communication within the artistic community. As a result of his personal friendship with and aesthetic influence from Franz Kline, Siskind uses media such as broken walls and flaking plaster to achieve... more »
Paintings from Midwestern University Collections: Seventeenth-Twentieth Centuries
15 May–22 June 1975
The relationships between God and Man, man and Nature, Man’s role in society, and the artist’s role in portraying the world have been issues at the forefront of artistic subject matter for centuries. The exhibition, Paintings from Midwestern University Collections: Seventeenth-Twenties Centuries included artists such as Franz Hals, Jacob van... more »
19th Century European Bronze Sculpture
2 April–30 April 1975
The exhibition attempted to allow lesser-known sculptors to emerge from the shadow of the more recognized figures like Auguste Rodin. The pieces range from large works such as Carpeaux’s Ugolino and His Sons to smaller domestic pieces. The curators hope that the exhibition will prompt much-needed scholarship on this body... more »
Color in Art
15 January–23 February 1975
The use of color in art from the 14th century to the present is explored in thirty-eight paintings and prints from the collection of the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, and through color diagrams, three-dimensional models and color maps. ... more »
Upcoming Exhibitions
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June 27 – August 25, 2013
The Land Beneath Our Feet: American Art at the Smart Museum -
February 13 – June 15, 2014
Performing Images: Opera in Chinese Visual Culture
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