Upcoming Exhibitions
October 1, 2009 – January 17, 2009 | Richard and Mary L. Gray Gallery for Special Exhibitions
Heartland
Throughout the vast interior of the United States, contemporary artists are responding to the world around them and reshaping it in unexpected ways. Linked by an inventive and self-sufficient spirit—an ethos embedded in the region’s pioneering and utopian past—these artists are building independent cultural infrastructures that sustain both the creation of art and the bonds of community. Featuring site-specific installations and performances as well as drawing, photography, and video by denizens of the area and outside artists-in-residence, this exhibition offers an idiosyncratic look at innovative forms of cultural production taking place in Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, and rural communities across the region. The Smart Museum's presentation of Heartland is organized in response to an earlier presentation of the exhibition at the Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands. Organized by the Smart Museum and the Van Abbemuseum, one of Europe's premier contemporary art institutions, Heartland challenges expectations of place and illuminates a diverse assembly of artists who are redefining the cultural terrain of the American heartland.
Artists and Artist Groups: Carnal Torpor, Cody Critcheloe and SSION, Jeremiah Day, Detroit Tree of Heaven Woodshop, Design 99, Scott Hocking, Kerry James Marshall, Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor, Greely Myatt, Marjetica Potrč, Julika Rudelius, Deb Sokolow, and Whoop Dee Doo.
Curators: Charles Esche, Director of the Van Abbemuseum, Kerstin Niemann, Research Curator at the Van Abbemuseum, and Stephanie Smith, Director of Collections and Exhibitions and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smart Museum of Art.
Exhibition catalogue available in fall 2009.
Tour: Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands, October 10, 2008 – January 25, 2009.
November 3, 2009 – April 11, 2010 | Edward A. and Inge Maser Gallery for Art Before 1900
Sites to Behold: Travels in Eighteenth-Century Rome
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 was giving way to more modern, democratic notions of travel. No longer the preserve of a privileged elite, travel to Italy and other places came within the reach of a wider public, who were eager for tangible souvenirs of what they saw and experienced. This exhibition presents etchings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, gouache drawings by Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lallemand, and other works depicting Rome and nearby Tivoli. These eighteenth-century artists, with their different temperaments, techniques, and styles, produced a breathtaking variety of art. A far cry from the monotony of the picture-postcard aesthetic, the works on view appealed to a wide array of tastes and allowed travelers of the period to marvel at the splendor and ruin of an ancient world long after they returned home.
Curator: Anne Leonard, Smart Museum Curator and Mellon Program Coordinator.
February 11 – June 13, 2010 | Richard and Mary L. Gray Gallery for Special Exhibitions
The Darker Side of Light: Arts of Privacy, 1850–1900
For much of today's public, the art of the late nineteenth century means Impressionism, an art of the open air and the café-concert, evoking the pleasure of the landscape and the city with its many entertainments. But there is another side to the story, a discreet world of individual collecting in which prints, drawings, and small sculpture were kept aside in portfolios or stored away in cabinets. Here the experience of art was a private affair, where prints in particular were valued for their aesthetic spontaneity, probing social observation, and intimate psychological suggestion. Organized by the National Gallery of Art, this exhibition includes works—especially prints, but also cabinet sculptures, illustrated books, drawings, and portfolios—by artists from Europe and the United States. By examining this range of highly engaging, often mysterious and beautiful objects, The Darker Side of Light evokes the shadowed interiors and private introspections that compose a far less familiar history of late nineteenth-century art.
Curator: Peter Parshall, Curator of Old Master Prints at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. The Smart Museum presentation is overseen by Anne Leonard, Smart Museum Curator and Mellon Program Coordinator.
Tour: Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California, April 5 – June 28, 2009; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, October 1, 2009 – January 18, 2010.
July 8 – September 5, 2010 | Richard and Mary L. Gray Gallery for Special Exhibitions
Mid-Century Design: European and American Modernisms, 1850–1950
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. This exhibition examines the complex, ever-shifting course of modern design theory and its application in Europe and the United States. Mounted entirely from the Smart Museum’s collection, the exhibition offers close readings of masterworks such as Edmond Johnson’s facsimiles of medieval treasures made for the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, furniture and leaded windows designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the historic Robie House, and Marianne Brandt’s rare modernist silver tea service, which was fabricated by hand in the metal workshop of the famed Bauhaus. Together, these and other works in a variety of media give insight into the interweaving history and iconic forms that defined the domestic world of modernism during the fertile one-hundred-year period between the mid centuries.
Curator: Richard A. Born, Smart Museum Senior Curator.
October 2011 – January 2012 | Richard and Mary L. Gray Gallery for Special Exhibitions
Feast: Radical Hospitality and Contemporary Art
The act of sharing food and drink with others is a basic human pleasure and an enduring source of aesthetic inspiration. Today, the shared meal has become a compelling artistic medium: a surprising number of artists are using meals to advance aesthetic goals and foster critical engagement with our current culture. These artist-orchestrated meals can offer a radical form of hospitality that punctures everyday experience, using food as a means to spark encounters and perceptions that aren't otherwise possible within our fast-moving and overly segmented society. Feast surveys these practices for the first time. Through a series of new art commissions in public spaces and a presentation within the Smart Museum, the exhibition will introduce new artists and contextualize their work in relation to some of the most influential artists of the last century, from the Italian Futurists to Gordon Matta-Clark and Rirkrit Tirvanija. Feast addresses the radical hospitality embodied by these artists and the social, commercial, and political structures that surround the experience of the shared meal.
Curator: Stephanie Smith, Director of Collections and Exhibitions and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smart Museum of Art.
Read Stephanie's curatorial research blog at blogs.uchicago.edu/feast
This exhibition is made possible by an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award.
The Smart Museum's general operating funds have been provided in part by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency. The Museum's exhibitions and related programs are generously supported by the Smart Family Foundation; the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the Alsdorf Foundation; Tom and Janis McCormick; Nuveen Investments; the Eloise W. Martin Fund; the Office of the Provost and the Visiting Committee on the Visual Arts, University of Chicago; and the members and friends of the Smart Museum. Education programs are supported by the Polk Bros. Foundation.