Smart Museum of Art

Last updated
Smart Museum of Art
University of Chicago July 2013 48 (Smart Museum).jpg
Smart Museum of Art
Former name
Smart Gallery
Established1974
Location5550 S Greenwood Avenue,
Chicago, Illinois 60637
United States
Type Art museum
Accreditation American Alliance of Museums
Collection size17,000+
DirectorVanja Malloy
Architect Edward Larrabee Barnes
Owner The University of Chicago
Website smartmuseum.uchicago.edu

The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art is an art museum located on the campus of the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. [1] The permanent collection has over 17,000 objects. Admission is free and open to the public. [2]

Contents

The Smart Museum and the adjacent Cochrane-Woods Art Center were designed by the architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. [3]

History

The University of Chicago began seriously planning to build an art museum and establish a permanent art collection in the 1960s (the Renaissance Society was founded in 1915, but does not collect art).

The founding gift came from the Smart Family Foundation in 1967 and construction began in 1971. The museum was named after David A. Smart (1892–1952) and his brother Alfred Smart (1895–1951), the Chicago-based publishers of Esquire , Coronet , and, with Teriade, Verve , as well as the founders of Coronet Films. David Smart was an art collector and owned paintings by Picasso, Renoir, and Chagall. However, the founding gift was of Esquire stock and did not include any works from his personal collection. [4] Instead, the collection was initially assembled from a variety of sources, including works of art in various university departments and gifts from foundations and individual donors. [5]

The Smart's founding director was the art historian and professor Edward A. Maser, and the museum was originally associated with the university's department of art history. In 1983, the museum became a separate unit of the university devoted to serving the entire community, including educational outreach activities in local public schools. In its early years it was known as the Smart Gallery but was renamed the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art in 1990 to reflect the expanded mission. [6]

Collection

There are over 17,000 objects in the Smart Museum's collection, which are often used in exhibitions and for courses taught at the University of Chicago. [7]

Modern art

Jean Metzinger, 1914-15, Soldat jouant aux echecs (Soldier at a Game of Chess), oil on canvas Jean Metzinger, 1915, Soldat jouant aux echecs (Soldier at a Game of Chess), oil on canvas, 81.3 x 61 cm, Smart Museum of Art.jpg
Jean Metzinger, 1914–15, Soldat jouant aux échecs (Soldier at a Game of Chess) , oil on canvas

The museum's modern art collection features paintings by Paul Delvaux, Arthur Dove, Childe Hassam, Walt Kuhn, Norman Lewis, Roberto Matta, Joan Mitchell, Jean Metzinger, Diego Rivera, and Mark Rothko, while the Joel Starrels, Jr. Memorial Collection includes sculpture by Jean Arp, Edgar Degas, Henry Moore, Jacques Lipchitz, and Auguste Rodin.

One of the most notable items in the collection is the original dining room furniture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Robie House. Most of the original Robie House furniture as well as a few window casings were transferred into the museum collection before it opened in 1974. At that time, the Robie House was still being used as offices for the University of Chicago. [5]

Asian art

The Asian collection includes literati scroll paintings from China, Japan, and Korea, Buddhist sculpture, ceramics, and ukiyo-e prints. The museum also has a large contemporary Chinese photography collection.

European art

Cecco Bravo, Angelica y Ruggiero, 1660 Cecco Bravo Angelica y Ruggiero 1660 David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art.jpg
Cecco Bravo, Angelica y Ruggiero, 1660

The European collection focuses on art created before 1900. Twenty-one works from the Kress Collection were donated to the Smart when it opened, including paintings by Cecco Bravo, Luca Cambiaso, Donato Creti, Pordenone, Girolamo da Santa Croce, Jan Steen, and Paolo Veronese. [8]

Other notable works include Goya's The Disasters of War and paintings by Gustave Caillebotte, Louis Dupré, and Jean-Baptiste Regnault.

Contemporary art

The contemporary collection includes works by John Chamberlain, Antony Gormley, Robert Irwin, Sylvia Sleigh, Andy Warhol, and Claire Zeisler. The museum has a notable collection of Chicago artists, with concentrations of works by the Chicago Imagists, the Monster Roster, and self-taught artists like Henry Darger and Lee Godie.

The collection also includes more recent works by Dawoud Bey, Nick Cave, Theaster Gates, Richard Hunt, Laura Letinsky, Kerry James Marshall, Dan Peterman, and Tony Tasset.

The museum maintains an archive of artwork, sketchbooks, letters, tools, original woodblocks, and other personal material related to the life and work of H. C. Westermann. Much of it was given to the Smart by Westermann's wife, Joanna Beall Westermann, and sister, Martha Renner. [9]

Architecture

The Smart Museum and the adjacent Cochrane-Woods Art Center, which houses classrooms and offices for the University of Chicago's department of art history, were designed by the Chicago-born architect Edward Larrabee Barnes.

The unadorned modernist buildings are linked by covered walkways and face a common outdoor sculpture garden. The buildings are clad in Indiana limestone. They "seem simple but the design is sophisticated" and relate to the gothic architecture and quadrangles found elsewhere on campus. [10]

The lobby of the museum features a vaulted ceiling with a north facing clerestory window. A renovation in 1999 reconfigured and expanded the public gallery spaces within the building's existing footprint. [3]

At the 1971 groundbreaking for the building, Edward H. Levi, the president of the University of Chicago, noted that the design was meant "to display rather than to distract from the works exhibited, and to enhance communication among the scholars" inside. Levi also noted that the project was originally intended to be much larger. Barnes had designed never-realized plans for music, theater, and library facilities extending to the north. [11]

Operations

The Smart Museum is wholly part of the University of Chicago. Its exhibitions and operations are funded through a variety of university, foundation, and individual contributions. It has a board of governors, a membership program, and faculty and student advisory committees. [12]

The museum is open to the public. There is no general admission fee or special charge for exhibitions. It is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Legion of Honor (museum)</span> Museum in San Francisco, California

The Legion of Honor, formally known as the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, is an art museum in San Francisco, California. Located in Lincoln Park, the Legion of Honor is a component of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), which also administers the de Young Museum. In 2024, the two combined museums were ranked 15th in the Washington Post's list of the best art museums in the U.S.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walker Art Center</span> Gallery in Minneapolis, opened 1927

The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the U.S.: together with the adjacent Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and Cowles Conservatory, it has an annual attendance of around 700,000 visitors. The museum's permanent collection includes over 13,000 modern and contemporary art pieces, including books, costumes, drawings, media works, paintings, photography, prints, and sculpture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samuel Henry Kress</span> American businessman, and philanthropist (1863–1955)

Samuel Henry Kress was a businessman, philanthropist, and founder of the S. H. Kress & Co. five and ten cent store chain. With his fortune, Kress amassed one of the most significant collections of Italian Renaissance and European artwork assembled in the 20th century. In the 1950s and 1960s, a foundation established by Kress would donate 776 works of art from the Kress collection to 18 regional art museums in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh</span> United States historic place

Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh is a nonprofit organization that operates four museums in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The organization is headquartered in the Carnegie Institute and Library complex in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The Carnegie Institute complex, which includes the original museum, recital hall, and library, was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 30, 1979.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Birmingham Museum of Art</span> Municipal art museum in Alabama, US

The Birmingham Museum of Art is a museum in Birmingham, Alabama. Its collection includes more than 24,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and decorative arts representing various cultures, including Asian, European, American, African, Pre-Columbian, and Native American. The museum is also home to some Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculptures,and decorative arts from the late 13th century to c. 1750.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kerr Eby</span> Canadian artist (1889–1946)

Kerr Eby was a Canadian illustrator best known for his renderings of soldiers in combat in the First and Second World Wars. He is held in a similar regard to Harvey Dunn and the other famous illustrators dispatched by the government to cover the First World War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive</span> University art museum, movie theater, and archive

The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive are a combined art museum, repertory movie theater, and archive associated with the University of California, Berkeley. Lawrence Rinder was Director from 2008, succeeded by Julie Rodrigues Widholm in August, 2020. The museum is a member of the North American Reciprocal Museums program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Art Institute of Chicago</span> Art museum in Chicago, United States

The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park. Its collection, stewarded by 11 curatorial departments, includes works such as Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Pablo Picasso's The Old Guitarist, Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, and Grant Wood's American Gothic. Its permanent collection of nearly 300,000 works of art is augmented by more than 30 special exhibitions mounted yearly that illuminate aspects of the collection and present curatorial and scientific research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Larrabee Barnes</span> American architect (1915–2004)

Edward Larrabee Barnes was an American architect. His work was characterized by the "fusing [of] Modernism with vernacular architecture and understated design." Barnes was best known for his adherence to strict geometry, simple monolithic shapes and attention to material detail. Among his best-known projects are the Haystack School, Christian Theological Seminary, Dallas Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, 599 Lexington Avenue, the Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building, and the IBM Building at 590 Madison Avenue.

The Chicago Imagists are a group of representational artists associated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center in the late 1960s.

Barbara Rossi was an American artist, one of the original Chicago Imagists, a group that in the 1960s and 1970s turned to representational art. She first exhibited with them at the Hyde Park Art Center in 1969. She is known for meticulously rendered drawings and cartoonish paintings, as well as a personal vernacular. She worked primarily by making reverse paintings on plexiglass that reference lowbrow and outsider art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">H. C. Westermann</span> American sculptor (1922-1981)

Horace Clifford Westermann was an American sculptor and printmaker. His sculptures frequently incorporate traditional carpentry, marquetry techniques, mixed media, and a range of personal, literary, artistic, and pop-cultural references.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Douglas Volk</span> American painter (1856–1935)

Stephen Arnold Douglas Volk was an American portrait and figure painter, muralist, and educator. He taught at the Cooper Union, the Art Students League of New York, and was one of the founders of the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts. He and his wife Marion established a summer artist colony in western Maine.

The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (NEHMA) is an accredited academic art museum focused on modern and contemporary art at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. NEHMA was founded in 1982 with the ceramic collection of philanthropist and namesake Nora Eccles Harrison. The museum has since expanded to include over 5,500 objects focused on modernist and contemporary works created in the western region of the United States. The core of the collection explores certain key art historical movements including Beat, Los Angeles Post-Surrealism, Santa Fe Transcendentalism, and Bay Area Abstract Expressionism. The museum also collects and exhibits contemporary works that function as glimpses of the thriving art scenes found in many cities in the Western United States. Additionally, the museum serves as the recipient of the Vogel Collection for the state of Utah.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Arizona Museum of Art</span> Art museum in Tucson, Arizona, United States

The University of Arizona Museum of Art (UAMA) is an art museum in Tucson, Arizona, operated by the University of Arizona. The museum's permanent collection includes more than 6,000 works of art, including paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings with an emphasis on European and American fine art from the Renaissance to the present.

Culture Coast Chicago is a collection of artistically vibrant neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Known for its high concentration of museums, music and theater ensembles, performance venues, cultural nonprofits, and arts education opportunities, the region spans from just south of McCormick Place to the South Shore Cultural Center and is bordered by Lake Michigan to the east and the Dan Ryan Expressway to the west.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ram Rahman</span> Indian photographer

Ram Rahman is a noted contemporary Indian photographer and curator. based in Delhi. He is one of the founding members of the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) in New Delhi, a leader in the resistance to communal and sectarian forces in India through its public cultural action.

Mu Xin is the pen name of Sun Pu, courtesy name Yangzhong, a Chinese painter, poet and writer. His works draw on both Chinese and Western traditions. The pen name Mu Xin is derived from Hang Dynasty Poetry 《木鐸含心》"the bronze bell has ringing heart of wood".

Alison "Ali" Gass is an American curator and museum director. She is the founding director of the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco. She has served as the director of the Institute of Contemporary Art San José, Smart Museum of Art, and chief curator of the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.

Wu Hung is an art historian and Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art History and the College at the University of Chicago. He has also taught at Harvard University and worked as an adjunct faculty curator at the Smart Museum of Art. He currently serves as the director of the Center for the Art of East Asia at the University of Chicago.

References

  1. Yood, James (August 2012). "Chicago's Other Institutions". www.artltdmag.com. art ltd. magazine. Retrieved 2016-07-12.
  2. "About the Smart Museum of Art". smartmuseum.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2025-01-23.
  3. 1 2 Lauerman, Connie (November 21, 1999). "Grand Reopening". Chicago Tribune . p. 1. Retrieved March 2, 2015.
  4. Mazie, David (2003). Two Visionary Brothers: David and Alfred Smart. Smart Museum of Art. pp. 1, 21–22. ISBN   0935573372.
  5. 1 2 Taylor, Sue, ed. (1990). The Smart Museum of Art: A Guide to Collection. Smart Museum of Art. pp. 15–17. ISBN   978-1555950613.
  6. Boyer, John W. (2009). A Noble and Symmetrical Conception of Life: The Arts at Chicago on the Edge of a New Century. The University of Chicago. pp. 111–115.
  7. "Smart Collection". smartmuseum.uchicago.edu. Retrieved January 23, 2025.
  8. "Kress Foundation Collection". www.kressfoundation.org. Retrieved 2016-07-12.
  9. "H. C. Westerman Study Collection, Smart Museum of Art". smartcollection.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2016-07-12.
  10. Pridmore, Jay (2006). University of Chicago: An Architectural Tour. Princeton Architectural Press. p. 156. ISBN   978-1568984476.
  11. Levi, Edward (October 29, 1971). "Groundbreaking Ceremony". transcript of groundbreaking speeches. Retrieved July 11, 2016.
  12. "Bulletin, Smart Museum of Art". smartmuseum.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2016-07-12.
  13. "Accredited Museums". www.aam-us.org. Archived from the original on 2016-03-14. Retrieved 2016-07-12.

41°47′37″N87°36′01″W / 41.7935°N 87.6002°W / 41.7935; -87.6002