5550 S. Greenwood Aveune
University of Chicago
Chicago IL, 60637
Phone: 773.702.0200 Visit Website
The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art houses a permanent collection of over 10,000 objects, spanning five millennium of both Western and Eastern civilizations. The scope of its permanent collections, combined with groundbreaking special exhibitions, this focus on research and teaching by University of Chicago scholars, and distinguished outreach and educational programs geared to both adults and school age children. This makes the Smart Museum one of the Midwest's most dynamic and innovative educational institutions in the visual arts.
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Specialty: Museum of Art
Neighborhood: University of Chicago - Hyde Park Campus
Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, Thursday 10:00 am to 8:00 pm, Saturday & Sunday 11:00 am to 5:00 pm
Galleries closed Monday and holidays
Events Calendar
“Objects of Inquiry: The Buckley Collection of Japanese Art” From: June 26 2008 To: December 16 2008 In the late 19th century, Edmund Buckley prepared for his doctoral work by gathering together hundreds of Japanese artworks and religious objects. The collection formed the basis for Buckley’s doctoral work at the University of Chicago and was exhibited on campus in one of the first systematic displays of Japanese religious objects in the West. By examining the Japanese art and artifacts of the Buckley collectionÑincluding paintings, sculpture, woodblock prints, temple maps, sutras, and religious talismansÑthis exhibition not only delves into the history of museum collections, religious studies and the University, but also offers insight into the place of ethnicity and religion in late 19th-century popular culture.
Seeing the City: Sloan's New York From: May 22 2008 To: September 14 2008 May 22 – September 14, 2008
Seeing the City: Sloan's New York
John Sloan's images of New York helped define the city in the popular imagination. Yet Sloan's vision was a subjective one, tied to his particular observations of the neighborhoods in which he lived and the individuals he encountered. In gritty depictions of urban life, Sloan celebrated the metropolis of New York by focusing on street scenes, elevated trains, public spaces, and the lives of ordinary Americans. More than a series of distinct locations, Sloan's images of New York reflect the artist's own movement through and pedestrian experience of the city. Gathering together a wealth of material in all media from 1900 to the 1930s—on loan from various public and private collections—this exhibition demonstrates the correlation between where Sloan created his art and what he depicted. Seeing the City maps 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 From: May 04 2008 To: November 02 2008 April 8 – November 2, 2008
Edward A. Maser Gallery for Art Before 1900
Idols are worrisome objects. From ancient times to the present day, theological traditions have reflected on idolatry and questioned the transcendence, significance, and power of objects. Different anxieties have produced different artistic practices. This exhibition navigates a variety of theological and secular perspectives in order to explore the complex relationships between objects of worship, their makers, and their audiences. For example, in ancient Mesopotamia, a cult statue was installed in the temple only after an elaborate ritual in which artisans proclaimed not to have made the idol while presenting their hands to be symbolically chopped off. Finding such ritual denials ineffective, the Bible's second commandment—make no graven images—deemed all object worship idolatrous. Alternatively, some Christian theologians embraced representations of Christ and contended that such images were valid because Christ himself was the word made flesh. By juxtaposing Mesopotamian cult figures with Classical antiquities and Renaissance paintings, Idol Anxiety examines how objects become idols and offers insight into the sometimes uneasy relationship between people and things.
5550 S. Greenwood Aveune
“Objects of Inquiry: The Buckley Collection of Japanese Art”
Idol Anxiety
