Closed for Installation

The Smart will be closed July 14 - September 22

Free and open to the public

 
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Past Exhibitions

Albrecht Durer, Sudarium Displayed by Two Angels, 1513, Engraving on cream laid paper. Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard L. Selle, 1979.1.

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.

Visitors watch Guy Ben-Ner's Wild Boy (2004) from a carpeted hill that re-creates the woodland set the artist built in his kitchen. Photo by Jim Newberry.

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. 

Installation view

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. 

Honoré Daumier, Four lithographs from the series The Comet (on original newsprint), 1857-1858, Smart Museum of Art, Purchase, Paul and Miriam Kirkley Fund for Acquisitions, 2005.31.3.

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.

Installation view

Master Drawings from the Yale University Art Gallery

October 4, 2007 – January 6, 2008

This exhibition, organized by the Yale University Art Gallery, provided a compelling survey of European draftsmanship, with masterworks by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Edgar Degas, Guercino, Jacob Jordaens, and Jean-Antoine Watteau, among many others.

Objects of Inquiry: The Buckley Collection of Japanese Art

September 15 – December 16, 2007

Featuring paintings, sculpture, woodblock prints, temple maps, sutras, and religious talismans collected between 1886 and 1892 by Edmund Buckley, this exhibition delved in to the history of museum collections and religious studies at the University of Chicago.

Hendrick Goltzius, Pietà (Lamentation of the Virgin), 1596, Engraving. Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Purchase, Paul and Miriam Kirkley Fund for Acquisitions, 2006.99.

The World Writ Small: Early Northern European Prints

June 16 – September 8, 2007

The diminutive engravings and woodcuts made by northern European artists in the first half of the sixteenth century may not be monumental in scale, but they contributed to nothing less than a revolution in printmaking. 

Marianne Brandt, Tea Service: Tea Infuser (Pot), Creamer, Sugar Bowl, and Tray, 1924 (design, manufactured between 1924 and 1929), hammered sterling silver and ebony. Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Anonymous Gift in memory of Liesl Landau, 20

Living Modern: German and Austrian Art and Design, 1890-1933

June 7 – September 16, 2007

This exhibition looked at the “Modernisms” that together contributed to the richness of life in Germany and Austria during a remarkable period of cultural redefinition, social transformation, and political reorganization. 

Peter Cornelius, from Twelve Illustrations to Goethe's Faust by Peter Cornelius, 1816 (plate, this impression 1845), Engraving. Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Gift of Stephen and Elizabeth Crawford, 2006.102.h.

Majestic Nature/Golden History: German Romantic Art

April 24 – October 21, 2007

This exhibition of paintings, drawings, and prints from the private collection of Stephen and Elizabeth Crawford and from the Smart Museum surveyed the artistic currents of German-speaking lands in nineteenth-century.