One/Many: Western American Survey Photographs by Bell and O’Sullivan

February 2 – May 7, 2006

William Bell and Timothy H. O'Sullivan, two photographers who joined survey expeditions in the 1860s and 1870s, helped open the eyes of nineteenth-century Americans to the western frontier. 

Collecting for the Cause: Activist Art in the 1960s and ‘70s

December 17, 2005 – March 12, 2006

In the 1960s and early '70s, many American artists actively questioned the artist's role and responsibility in the public sphere. As they sought political relevance for their work, the relatively easy duplication and dissemination of works on paper made printmaking a choice medium. 

Whose Land?: European and American Landscapes, 1600-1900

November 22, 2005 – April 23, 2006

Featuring European and American masters from the Smart Museum collection, this exhibition focused on exchange among landscape traditions, while questioning the usefulness and limitations of conventional geographic classifications.

Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art

October 6, 2005 – January 15, 2006

The Poetry of Shijo Surimono

September 17 – December 11, 2005

Celebrating the sophisticated literary and artistic culture of nineteenth-century Japan, the social elite of the day commissioned artists and publishers to create costly and intricate prints called surimono. 

Syncopation: André Lhote, Louis Marcoussis, and the Cubist Print

June 18 – September 11, 2005

This exhibition featured two cycles of Cubist prints by André Lhote, Louis Marcoussis in the Smart Museum collection. 

Centers and Edges: Modern Ceramic Design and Sculpture, 1880-1980

June 2 – September 18, 2005

This exhibition examined how American and European artists reimagined the potential of clay as an artistic medium.

Quiet Revolutions: Modernizing Traditional Art in East Asia

May 10 – November 6, 2005

The twentieth century was a period of extraordinary social and political transformation throughout East Asia. 

Objects of History: The Boone Collection of Japanese Art

April 9 – June 12, 2005

This intimate exhibition drew from more than 3,500 Japanese objects in the Boone Collection of the Field Museum in Chicago—traditionally a place for "material culture"—and brought scroll paintings, woodblock prints, and decorative arts objects from the later Edo to Taisho periods (18th–20th centuries) to an art museum context. 

Jacques Callot and the Etched Series

February 8 – April 3, 2005

The endlessly inventive etchings of Jacques Callot (1592–1635) make him one of the most important printmakers of the early seventeenth century, or indeed of any period.