Exhibitions
Collection Galleries
Modern Art & Design
Elisabeth and William Landes Gallery
Dating from 1880 to the 1950s, the Smart Museum's collection of modern art and design comprises European and American painting, sculpture, decorative arts, and works on paper.
The works on view demonstrate the varied ways that European and American artists engaged with the challenges, experiences, and ideas of a rapidly changing world. Thematic clusters mix paintings and sculpture with decorative arts. Together, the works represent a diversity of modernist, abstract, and figurative styles and movements and touch on subjects like the city and its entertainments, emotion and inner states, and the formal and material properties of art itself.
Current highlights include paintings by Childe Hassam, Arthur Dove, and Mark Rothko and the dining room furniture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the nearby Robie House.
Works on paper
A small area of the gallery is dedicated to thematic displays of works on paper; these change every four months to protect the works from damage caused by long-term exposure to light.
The current presentation features photographs by Andreas Feininger, the son of painter Lyonel Feininger who was an editorial photographer with Life magazine from 1943 until 1962. This small display focuses on Feininger's fascination with the creative manipulation of light and its material qualities. The works on view are drawn from a larger collection of Feininger photographs, all vintage or lifetime impressions, which were recently given to the Smart by the estate of the artist's widow.
Top: Installation view of the Smart Museum's gallery of modern art and design, showing paintings by Matta, Kurt Seligmann, and Kenzo Okada together with sculptures by Henry Moore and Hans Arp.
Explore the collection
Explore our online collections database and discover the Smart Museum's full collection of modern art and design.
