Past Exhibitions
Composing Color:
Paintings by Alma Thomas from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
March 24 – July 5, 2026
Inspired by the cosmos, nature, and music, Alma Thomas (1891–1978) developed a form of abstraction that transcended established genres. Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas draws on the extensive holdings of the artist’s paintings at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and offers an intimate view of Thomas’s evolving practice during her most prolific period, from 1959 to 1978.
.png?mtime=1767898602)
Beyond Boundaries:
Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art at the Smart
March 29 – July 5, 2026
Beyond Boundaries foregrounds the University of Chicago’s pivotal role in studying and exhibiting contemporary Chinese art. Bringing together artworks acquired by the Museum over the last three decades, archival materials, as well as new work, the exhibition explores how artists navigate and challenge physical limitations across cultural, environmental, and political terrains.
Smart to the Core: Wise to Power
September 23, 2025 - July 5, 2026
Part I, September 23, 2025 - February 22, 2026
Part II, March 24, 2026 - July 5, 2026
Why and how do people form political communities? How does political society organize our economic lives - and vice versa? And how as individuals do we navigate society? Smart to the Core: Wise to Power examines these questions by integrating visual art with foundational texts of modern social and political thought spanning over three centuries.
Theaster Gates -
African Still Life #3: A Tribute to Patric McCoy and Marva Jolly
September 23, 2025 - July 5, 2026
Presented as an open-storage museum cabinet, African Still Life #3: A Tribute to Patric McCoy and Marva Jolly is a site-specific installation offered as part of the Museum's Threshold Lobby Series. Introduced in conjunction with the exhibition Theaster Gates: Unto Thee, this installation deepens Gates's ongoing investigation of rituals of accumulation, redemption, and relational aesthetics.
Theaster Gates: Unto Thee
September 23, 2025 - February 22, 2026
A self-designated “keeper of objects,” the artist Theaster Gates investigates the value of things and their potential to hold layered meanings. He has been dedicated to investing in the care of these objects as a way to nurture stories and voices—often Black stories and voices—largely overlooked by history or institutional structures. This is Gates's first solo museum exhibition in his hometown of Chicago.
Expanding the 50th: Shared Stories
March 25, 2025 – July 13, 2025
Expanding the 50th: Shared Stories offers an updated presentation of the institution’s anniversary exhibition to explore the histories that have made up the Smart Museum over the last five decades. In honor of its anniversary, the Smart has commissioned four artists to create new works as interventions in the Museum’s and our shared histories.
Robert Earl Paige: Give the Drummer Some!
September 24, 2024 - July 2025
For the Smart’s 50th anniversary, South Side artist Robert Earl Paige creates a multi-part pattern-based installation and sprawling public art project that invites communities into a collective experience of space.
The 50th: An Anniversary Exhibition
September 24, 2024 – March 2, 2025
Drawing from across the breadth and depth of the collection, this exhibition marks the Smart Museum of Art's 50th anniversary and explores what makes and defines a university art museum.
Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan
March 21–June 9, 2024
This landmark exhibition takes a fresh look at the art of Japan’s Meiji era (1868–1912), four remarkable decades that propelled the country into the modern era.
Ruth Duckworth: Life as a Unity
September 21, 2023–February 4, 2024
This exhibition positions Ruth Duckworth as an innovative Chicago sculptor, deeply engaged in the natural world and responding to artistic developments in the U.S. in the 1960s and 70s.