“What is art for?” asks art historian Katharine Kuh in the introductory wall text of the Smart Museum’s ambitious rehang of their entire gallery space. The question was likely at least partly rhetorical, but if this exhibition offers any clues, it has something to do with discovering surprising and unlikely resonances.
Opened in 1974 as part of the University of Chicago’s art department, the Smart has long since become a stand-alone institution that often highlights local and contemporary artists while always focusing on the teaching aspects of art presentation, appreciation, and scholarship.
The chance to rethink and reimagine the entire installation of a stalwart institution like the Smart is a rare treat.
Though the exhibition is roughly chronological—in that work from the 1960s and ’70s dominates the first gallery and work from the last couple decades takes up much of the last room—there are many asynchronous groupings. The first piece that made me stop was Jan Steen’s A Game of Skittles (circa 1650). It’s hung high up, salon-style, along with several disparate but mostly abstract 20th-century works. I’m a sucker for Dutch genre painting, and though the Steen is too high up for me to examine it closely, I stood for several minutes trying to understand why the curators placed it where they did. I never cracked that secret but the fact they made me stop and think indicates some measure of success in their choice, whatever the intention.
“The 50th: An Anniversary Exhibition”
Through 3/2/25: Tue–Sun 10 AM–4:30 PM, Smart Museum of Art, 5550 S. Greenwood, smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/exhibitions/the-50th-an-anniversary-exhibition, free
In the same room, a top-tier Mark Rothko canvas, No. 2 (1962), is accompanied by a label that quotes the artist’s ambition as the “elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, between the idea and the observer.” I’m usually not fond of reading wall text but this show is the rare one where attention to them is warranted. One of the reasons is that many labels are written by the university’s students and professors, thereby providing unusually fresh, of-the-moment takes on the work, be it contemporary or ancient.
Courtesy of the Smart Museum
A great example of how the exhibition emphasizes art-historical study is the freestanding display of a Felix Nussbaum canvas featuring a 1927 portrait on one side and a group of masked figures circa 1939 on the other. Not only is this a unique way to trace one artist’s development but it is also an insight into the fraught economics of many painters’ lives. Nussbaum’s reuse of a 12-year-old canvas speaks to a reality many museum visitors may not consider.
Another fascinating pairing is a wood engraving by Willem van Swanenburgh hung over an etching by Pieter van Sompel. Done 30-odd years apart, in 1611 and 1643, respectively, both were made from a painting by Peter Paul Rubens. But the differences in media point to how developments and discoveries in technology can drastically alter a creative outcome. Imagine the same scene photographed by Polaroid and digital cameras and you’ll get some sense of the qualitative contrast between these two now-archaic printing processes.
I spent some quality time with Kerry James Marshall’s Slow Dance (1992–93). It’s a canvas that gracefully marries a simple moment of romantic intimacy with several clashing approaches to rendering seen and felt life. How he gets away with a musical staff and floating notes over a dancing couple in a humble living room without a bit of saccharine schmaltz is a mystery I can’t (and wouldn’t want to) uncover.
Other highlights include Ben Shahn’s trenchant series of pen-and-ink illustrations for an article about the Great Migration and Dan Peterman’s hard-to-categorize glass and steel pods filled with scientific detritus. They’re like artifacts from a long-extinct civilization, except that it is the one we’re living in, for the moment.
Courtesy the Smart Museum
Being a catchall survey, not everything will appeal to everyone. There’s too much photography for my taste, and Antony Gormley’s Infinite Cube (2014) is a silly optical curio that belongs at Navy Pier or the gone-and-forgotten Museum of Holography rather than in a darkened room all its own, as if it’s some sacred relic.
I understand why the curators had to devote an entire corner to the Chicago Imagists and two of their main progenitors, H.C. Westermann and Joseph Yoakum, but much of this stuff looked shopworn and prosaic; local yokels included so as to appease longtime collectors. Kind of like casting your spouse in your movie knowing they don’t have much talent but doing it anyway because you value the relationship.
Overall, the chance to rethink and reimagine the entire installation of a stalwart institution like the Smart is a rare treat. I wish more local museums rehung their collections this way more often. The idea that a museum can be a dynamic, ever-changing entity, as opposed to a staid repository of unquestioned treasures, is an attractive one. The Smart’s holdings are rich enough that they could make an entirely new exhibition a few times a year.
If they do, I hope a Jan Steen piece is included, and that it be hung at eye level and away from the sun’s glare.
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