Past Exhibitions
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.
Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art
October 2, 2008 – January 25, 2009
This exhibition presents work that four leading contemporary Chinese artists—Chen Qiulin, Yun-Fei Ji, Liu Xiaodong, and Zhuang Hui—have created in response to the Three Gorges Dam.
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.
Street Level: Modern Photography from the Smart Museum Collection
June 17 – September 7, 2008
With photographs by Walker Evans, Georgy Zelma, Nathan Lerner, and Paul Strand, among others, this exhibition of works from the Smart Museum collection looks at the modern city as seen from the street.
Seeing the City: Sloan’s New York
May 22 – September 14, 2008
Seeing the City maps John Sloan's New York, locating precisely the sites portrayed in his work and examining the personal meaning tied to the places he chose to depict again and again.
Idol Anxiety
April 8 – November 2, 2008
By juxtaposing Mesopotamian cult figures with Classical antiquities and Renaissance paintings,Idol Anxiety examined how objects become idols and offered insight into the sometimes uneasy relationship between people and things.
Sol LeWitt: Color and Line, Reproduced
March 25, 2008 – June 8, 2008
This exhibition, which featured a suite of lithographs and a sampling of artists' books created between 1968 and 1977, explored how LeWitt's serial use of color and line intersected with some of his early experiments with mechanical reproduction.
Adaptation: Video Installations by Ben-Ner, Herrera, Sullivan, and Sussman & The Rufus Corporation
January 31 – May 4, 2008
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.
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.
Looking and Listening in Nineteenth-Century France
November 6, 2007 – March 23, 2008
This exhibition combines prints, paintings, drawings, sculptures, as well as music from nineteenth-century France to examine the habits and fashions associated with looking and listening.