Organized by the Smart Museum of Art's Feitler Center for Academic Inquiry, this symposium highlights the interdisciplinary research and creative work of the 2023–2024 Smart Scholars cohort.

This year the cohort has been researching photographic representations of Mexican national identity, Czech visual narrative and storytelling, Black subjectivities taking up space, and the lived experience of 13th century Chinese funerary vessels.

Campus and community members are invited to attend the public talks highlighting the individual research projects of the cohort and creative interventions in film, poetry, photography, and lyric essay.

FREE, open to the public. This is a hybrid event. Please RSVP to attend the symposium in person or register for the Zoom link to attend virtually.

Presenters

• Adesuwa Obasuyi (Creative Writing and English Langauge and Literature, Class of 2024)
• Anna Katz (Media Arts and Design, History, and Visual Arts, Class of 2024)
• Cristina Rodriguez (Cinema and Media Studies, Visual Arts, and Religious Studies, Class of 2025)
• Ruofan Zhao (Art History, Romance Languages and Literatures, East Asian Studies, Class of 2024)

About

Smart Scholars is an undergraduate research program resulting in an original creative work (of visual art, music, dance, writing), program, or scholarly essay. Students propose their own projects that center two or more objects in the Smart collection, grounded in academic research of those objects.

Images (clockwise from top): 
Vladimír Suchánek, Guard of Honour (detail), 1975, Color lithograph on wove paper. Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Marcia and Granvil Specks Collection, 1981.272.

Kerry James Marshall, Study for Slow Dance, 1992, Ink on paper. Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Gift of the artist, 2005.71.

Paul Strand, Men of Santa Anna, Michoacan, 1967 (printing date, plates 1940), Photogravure plate on Rives BFK paper. Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Gift of Alan and Lois Fern, 2008.228.5. 

Funerary Vessel with Lid, Late Song-Yuan dynasty, 13th century, Glazed stoneware with qingbai glaze and applied molded and modeled decoration. Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Gift of Isaac S. and Jennifer A. Goldman, 1997.6a-b.