“Untidy Objects” is a video essay by Isabella Diefendorf (AB’24) that explores the connections between “Unsettled Ground” and “Untidy Objects,” an ongoing environmental sculpture by Sarah Black, Amber Ginsburg, and Sam Frost. The sculpture, can be visited at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, takes the form of a collection of biozones, or small ecosystems based around sunlight, shade, water, and elevation, challenging the traditional distinctions between subject and object by creating a horticultural sculpture that includes humans as co-constituents of the ecological community. Untidy Objects contains themes such as temporality, surreality, artifice, close looking, and slow violence. 👀
What is an untidy object? An untidy object is an object that is inextricably intertwined with its surroundings. Each tree would not exist without the support of the forest, so where does the forest end and the tree begin? This is the question of the untidy object. Untidy Objects seeks to bring this co-mingling of beings to the forefront of the mind. By emphasizing these porous boundaries between the self and the other, a person walking through the sculptural garden feels as though they’re becoming a part of it.
Although the Smart Museum of Art will be temporarily closed, there are still other wonderful resources and opportunities to closely engage with art this summer! Till very soon. 🫶
Didn’t get a chance to visit “Unsettled Ground” before the renovation this summer? No worries, here is one more gallery talk! ✨
Student curator Wenshu Wang’s (MAPH’22) project centers on Yun-Fei Ji’s handscroll titled “The Three Gorges Dam Migration” (2010). It depicts a crowd of villagers making their way along the Yangtze River. This migration was provoked by the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydroelectric plant that displaced approximately 1.5 million people. 💦
Extending 10 feet in length, Ji’s scroll - printed from hand-carved woodblocks rather than painted with ink - engenders a sense of visual exhaustion that echoes the migrants’ wearing journey. Interspersed amid banal details of waiting, smoking, and sleeping are ghostly and fantastic figures that extend the upheaval of forced resettlement beyond the human world. With former townships and villages now submerged by the flooded waters of the reservoir, Ji made this work to remind us of the costs of reconfiguring the land of exploitation. 🏗
"Unsettled Ground" Gallery Talk
🔊Join Meichen Liu (MPAH’22) for a gallery talk on a print titled “Cherry, South Haven” (1909) by Bertha Evelyn Jaques. This print features a cherry branch collected in South Haven, Michigan. In addition to its scientific value, it also evinced Jaques’s aesthetic sensibility. The cherry blossoms, rendered in various degrees of transparency, seem to radiate outwards and upwards, while the scattered petals to the right suggest the passing of time. ⏳
A founder of the Chicago Society of Etchers and active member of the Wildflower Preservation Society, Bertha Evelyn Jaques also created thousands of cyanotypes of plant specimens. Jaques regarded her work as a way of preserving the ephemeral beauty of the natural world. She once described her practice, “There is a moment’s loveliness too great for words to hold; so paper caught and scattered it for all the world to keep.” 🌸
Join our student curator Sindy Chen for a gallery talk of one of the highlights of the exhibition “Unsettled Ground.” Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto’s “Birds of Japan” is part of his “Dioramas” series, a decades-long project in which the artist photographed the displays of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Sugimoto remarked his series, “However fake the subject, once photographed, it is as good as real.” 📸
Sindy’s research investigates how Sugimoto’s photograph encourages us to attend to the way our visual perception is constantly medicated by different cultural and technological apparatuses. In her essay, Sindy claims that Sugimoto re-examines one of photography’s foundational myths - the idea that, through photography, we have reached a certain limit of equivalence between reality and it’s reproduction. His diorama works attempt to capture, which metaphorically or by proxy, that which cannot be represented directly.
Read more about Sindy's research here: https://voices.uchicago.edu/unsettledground/hiroshi-sugimotos-birds-of-japan/
#gallerytalk #unsettledground #smartmuseum
Join us for a concert stream from UChicago Presents 🎉
Dazzling soprano Sarah Brailey is joined by cellist Caleb van der Swaagh for this virtual performance of works for solo voice and voice and cello.
Offered as part of the UChicago Presents’ SOUND/SITES series, this performance features Fulton Recital Hall in Goodspeed Hall, one of the oldest buildings on campus. Also featured is the Smart Museum of Art, where diverse exhibitions and collections are on display, including visionary works by Bob Thompson.
Concert premieres at 7:30 pm CT on Thursday, May 12 and will be available until 11:59 pm CT on Thursday, May 19, 2022.
Toward Common Cause
Throughout 2021, we marked the 40th anniversary of the MacArthur Fellows Program with the biennial-style exhibition Toward Common Cause. The exhibition was realized in partnership with 19 venues across multiple Chicago neighborhoods and featured 29 artists in collaborative, community-based projects and gallery shows that considered art’s vital role in society as a call to vigilance, a way to bear witness, and a potential act of resistance. "Toward Common Cause" continues into 2022 with "Ida Applebroog: MONALISA" at the University of Chicago's Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, "Gómez-Peña’s Casa Museo" at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, and through ongoing projects across sites on the South and West Sides from Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Mel Chin, Kerry James Marshall, and Rick Lowe.
Learn more and browse a video archive of past programs at https://TowardCommonCause.org.
Irene Hsiao: Vessel
In "Lust, Love, and Loss," flesh becomes object, and object softens into flesh. The skin becomes a veil, a billowing cloth a sail, the body a bowl—or an ornament—or a frame. Material and matter, animate and inanimate, dead and alive are the same: the line of an etching, a brushstroke, a bronze, a breath, a word, clay. A ship, a channel, a chamber, a chalice, a creature, a carafe, a woman, a cloud, a sound: "Vessel."
Learn more: https://smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/public-practice/public-practice-projects/irene-hsiao-artist-in-residence/vessel/
Irene Hsiao is 2020–2021 Smart Museum Artist in Residence. Irene Hsiao and this project are supported by the 2020 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist program. This project is inspired by the 2021 Smart Museum exhibition "Lust, Love, and Loss in Renaissance Europe."
Movement: Irene Hsiao
Music: Bravais Lattice (Raul Barragàn and Claire Zurkowski)
Costume: Vin Reed
Links Hall video made possible by the Walder Foundation’s Chicago Takes 10 series and Pivot Arts
Lighting and Technical Direction: Giau Minh Truong
Videography: Paul Scudder
Sound Engineering: Che Arthur
Smart Museum of Art video recorded by Irene Hsiao
Concept and editing by Irene Hsiao.
Family Day: Birth-Tray Party
Come together as a family to create a special “Birth-Tray,” plate, or bowl based on an Italian Renaissance tradition! Tell your kiddos a tale of their birth-day, and with a little color, turn it into a keepsake and family heirloom. We’ll show you how to make a plaster platter from scratch and then paint it like a fresco, but you can also do this with thrift-store white plates or large platters from any home goods store.
Materials
-- Plaster (or a white platter, plate, tray, or bowl)
-- Paint (any kind)
-- Bucket
-- Water
-- Brushes
Artist and museum educator Erik L. Peterson brings the fun and innovative hands-on artmaking of the Smart Museum’s monthly family days into your home in a series of instructional videos. The projects are inspired by the art and artists in the permanent collections of the Smart Museum of Art and, where possible, make use of materials and tools that you might already have around home or in your recycling bin.
Lust, Love, and Loss in Renaissance Europe
Take a virtual tour of "Lust, Love, and Loss in Renaissance Europe" at the Smart Museum of Art, led by curator Nora S. Lambert.
Family Day: Wallpaper Workshop
Create incredible custom wallpaper for your room using collage and drawing techniques inspired by Berlin-based artist Claudia Wieser. This removable wallpaper is a perfect way to get creative with your personal space—make one panel or wallpaper your whole room, its up to you!
Materials
-- Contact paper (removable)
-- Permanent markers
-- Scissors
-- Newspaper or printouts
-- Glue
-- Ruler
Artist and museum educator Erik L. Peterson brings the fun and innovative hands-on artmaking of the Smart Museum’s monthly family days into your home in a series of instructional videos. The projects are inspired by the art and artists in the permanent collections of the Smart Museum of Art and, where possible, make use of materials and tools that you might already have around home or in your recycling bin.
Art, Smart, and Social Change: UChicago Giving Day 2021
On UChicago's 6th annual Giving Day, help the Smart Museum continue to bring us all closer to art, to real-world concerns, and to each other by making a gift today: https://givingday.uchicago.edu/campaigns/art-smart-and-social-change?appeal_id=5e67d3e8165dd6001f992a7c
With Giving Day underway, Lead Museum Educator Mayra Cecilia Palafox, takes us on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Smart and talks about how your gift will support the presentation of new exhibitions, such as this summer’s Toward Common Cause, while also supporting the delivery of dynamic programs, an enhanced virtual footprint, and the best possible guest experience for you.
Family Day: Shelter Drawings
Family Day: Fancy Flying Feast
Claudia Wieser: Generations
11/5/20 Colortunes - The World Needs More Purple People
Plastically Present: In Gu’s Room
The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China
Proof our sculpture garden is a pretty sight, even in the rain
The H.C. Westermann Study Collection
Feitler Center for Academic Inquiry
Emmanuel Pratt: Radical [Re]Constructions
Be part of a radically transformed Smart