THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO’S SMART MUSEUM OF ART
MARKS 40th ANNIVERSARY SEASON IN 2014–15

HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE: TWO MAJOR MUSEUM-WIDE EXHIBITIONS,
PLUS INSTALLATION OF GALLERYX HUB & INTERPRETERS-IN-RESIDENCE

(May 20, 2014) The University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art, 5550 S. Greenwood Avenue, celebrates its 40th Anniversary season in 2014–15 with two major museum-wide exhibitions. Launching September 27, 2014, Carved, Cast, Crumpled: Sculpture All Ways takes over the entirety of the Museum, with a complete changeover of all 8,800 square feet of gallery space into a stunning exhibition of three-dimensional art from the collection. Following, Objects and Voices: A Collection of Stories (opening February 12, 2015) will showcase 17 micro-exhibitions by guest curators with a relationship to the Smart—distinguished professors, curators, young scholars, and Smart alumni—offering their own personal and professional perspectives on works in the collection, to reveal how objects and stories are intertwined. Augmenting these exhibitions will be Galleryx, an innovative, temporary new physical space to be installed in the center of the Museum. Designed by Kujawa Architecture, this participatory hub will invite and encourage public discussions of art and ideas, and will house the Smart’s new Interpreters in Residence, Chicago’s 500 Clown. Kicking off the Smart Museum’s 40th anniversary season will be the Hyde Park Jazz Festival and a Community Open House on the weekend of September 27–28; more details to be announced.

“Over the course of the season our 40th anniversary projects will transform the look and feel of the Smart, by showcasing the collection in new ways and by engaging with a host of collaborators to ask big questions about art,” said Anthony Hirschel, the Dana Feitler Director of the Smart Museum of Art. “The lessons we learn from the Galleryx initiative in particular will inform our future approaches to interpretation and visitor engagement, and will help us to redefine the Smart’s role as a teaching museum in the twenty-first century.”

Carved, Cast, Crumpled: Sculpture All Ways (September 27–December 21, 2014)

The immersive exhibition Carved, Cast, Crumpled investigates the essential qualities of three-dimensional art across historical and cultural contexts, and questions what it means to be in the presence of an object. Comprised of sculptural works and a handful of related drawings by sculptors, it will showcase a foundational component of the Museum’s collection, one that can be traced back to the Joel Starrels, Jr. Memorial Collection of modern sculpture that was featured in the Smart’s inaugural exhibition in the fall of 1974.

The exhibition will take over the whole Museum, transforming both spaces normally dedicated to temporary exhibitions as well as those that are home to longer-standing installations of the Smart’s collection. Among the approximately 175 works, highlights include small-scale sculptures by modern masters like Auguste Rodin, Jacques Lipchitz, and Henry Moore; ancient Chinese mingqi tomb figures and Asian Buddhist devotional statues; European bronzes of princes, putti, and classical heroes; and boundary-breaking work by postwar artists including Magdalena Abakanowicz, John Chamberlain, Michael Rakowitz, and H. C. Westermann. Through unexpected juxtapositions of objects, Carved, Cast, Crumpled explores the notion of sculpture in all its forms.

Galleryx & 500 Clown (September 27, 2014–June 14, 2015)
Galleryx is a temporary 1,150-square-foot space designed by Chicago-based Kujawa Architecture to be installed in the center of the Smart Museum amidst the exhibitions. This non-traditional hub will be home to informal displays of art, University of Chicago courses, public discussions, programs hosted by community partners, workshops, performances, and other interventions over the course of the year.

Among the principal activities centered in Galleryx will be the participatory “experiments in interpretation” devised by 500 Clown artists Adrian Danzig and Rebecca Stevens, the Smart’s 2014–15 Interpreters in Residence (a forum for Chicago-based artists with an interest in social engagement to create participatory art experiences with Smart Museum guests). 500 Clown, an adventurous theater company employing circus arts, improvisation, and action-based performance, has been commissioned by the Smart Museum to create The Art of Experience, a set of prompts that will invite audiences visiting the Museum to move from being passive observers to active participants.

Objects and Voices: A Collection of Stories (February 12–June 14, 2015)
Through a series of 17 micro-exhibitions curated by guest collaborators ranging from artist Kerry James Marshall and Scottish National Gallery of Art Chief Curator Keith Hartley to fifth graders from the Beasley Academic Center on the South Side, Objects and Voices will reveal the multiple ways one works with, learns from, and enjoys objects of art.

This collection-based exhibition is divided into a series of small thematic presentations organized by distinguished professors, artists, museum professionals, University of Chicago students, Smart staff, and notable Smart alumni. These vignettes reveal the diverse perspectives, passions, and expertise of their curators while raising bigger questions about the interpretation of creative and cultural objects, the role of audiences, and the transmission of knowledge through art. This special 40th anniversary exhibition also takes over the entire Museum—permanent collection and special exhibition galleries alike—and mixes traditional and non-traditional presentations of the Smart’s collection of Modern, Asian, European, and Contemporary art.

The story behind the Smart name

Despite the term “Smart” being synonymous with the “intelligence” for which the University of Chicago student body is renowned, the Smart Museum was actually named in memory of two visionary brothers—David (1892–1952) and Alfred (1895–1951) Smart, who launched Esquire magazine in Chicago in 1933. One of the first men’s fashion magazines, Esquire was also distinguished by the high quality of its literary and editorial features: the first issue included pieces by Ernest Hemingway, Jon Dos Passos, and Dashiell Hammett. The Smart brothers’ other ventures included Coronet Films, the nation’s leading producer of Cold War-era educational and training films, many of which are now cult favorites, and Verve, an oversized quarterly that debuted with a cover commissioned by Matisse and featured other original works by artists like Chagall and Picasso.

In the late 1960s, the Smart Family Foundation made a gift of Esquire stock to the University of Chicago for an art museum. The building, designed by Chicago-born architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, was formally dedicated in honor of David and Alfred Smart on October 22, 1974 and opened to the public on the following day.

About the Smart Museum of Art

The Smart Museum of Art is an intimate museum for bold encounters with art. Both fueling and expressing the creative energy of the University of Chicago, the Smart opens the world to boundary-breaking art and ideas through innovative special exhibitions, ever-changing programs, and distinctive collections.

Hours

The Smart Museum is open Tuesday–Sunday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m., and Thursday evenings until 8 p.m. Galleries are closed Mondays and holidays. The Smart is open to all and admission is always free.

Mission

The Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago opens the world through art and ideas.

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