Past Exhibitions
Process and Artistry in the Soviet Vanguard
August 30, 2011 – January 22, 2012
This intimate exhibition offers a rare glimpse at the experimental creative processes that generated iconic Soviet propaganda in the 1920s and 1930s.
Go Figure
June 30 – September 4, 2011
This exhibition illustrates pivotal moments in figurative art of the last sixty years through the work of nine exceptional artists: Nick Cave, Leon Golub, Yun-Fei Ji, Kerry James Marshall, Christina Ramberg, Martín Ramírez, Ravinder Reddy, Clare Rojas, and Sylvia Sleigh.
Warhol at Work: Portrait Snapshots, 1973-1986
May 10 – August 21, 2011
Over the course of his career, Pop Art pioneer Andy Warhol took thousands of photographs that were never intended to be seen by the public.
The Tragic Muse: Art and Emotion, 1700–1900
February 10 – June 5, 2011
This exhibition examines two centuries of works intertwined with emotion—from the sacrifice of classical heroines to the grief of ordinary people, from martyred saints to actors in tragic roles—and explores how art’s cathartic power grows or fades for new generations of viewers.
David Wojnarowicz: A Fire in My Belly
January 4 - February 6, 2011
A leading artist of the 1980s, David Wojnarowicz is known for the richly aesthetic and strongly activist works that he made in response to the AIDS crisis.
After the Readymade
December 14, 2010 - May 1, 2011
This intimate exhibition charts the history of the readymade, a particular strain of twentieth- and twenty-first-century art that takes manufactured objects as primary material.
Bingyi: Cascade
November 18, 2010 - December 11, 2011
The Chinese-born artist Bingyi inaugurates the Threshold series with the specially commissioned Cascade, an enormous painting that fills the central wall in the Smart’s reception hall.
Echoes of the Past: The Buddhist Cave Temples of Xiangtangshan
September 30, 2010 – January 16, 2011
Carved into the mountains of northern China, the Buddhist cave temples of Xiangtangshan were the crowning cultural achievement of the sixth-century Northern Qi dynasty.
Anna Kunz: Eidolon
September 10, 2010 – August 2011
The first art-banner commission in the Smart Museum's Threshold series is Ediolon, a large vinyl collage by Chicago-based artist Anna Kunz.
Darkness Revisited: A Collection of Private Pleasures
September 7 – December 5, 2010
Organized by University of Chicago students, this intimate exhibition offers a look at the shadowed interiors and private introspections of late nineteenth-century art.