Smart Collecting

The Smart Museum of Art's "Smart Collecting" exhibition runs from July 8 through September 5, 2004. The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago celebrates its thirtieth anniversary with this lively and richly illustrated catalog of recent acquisitions by the museum. Published in conjunction with the museum's Smart Collecting exhibition, this full-color volume is an up-to-date and essential reference to the collections of one of the country's most innovative university art museums. Accompanying the images is an essay by Kimerly Rorschach, the museum's Dana Feitler Director, that charts the growth and strengths of the collection as they relate to the teaching mission of the institution. Smart Collecting provides detailed documentation of all acquisitions by the Smart Museum between 1990 and 2004. The volume also features over fifty object entries contributed by members of the museum's staff that highlight valuable additions to the Smart's collection in various areas such as print and photographic art, German Expressionism, East Asian art, and contemporary Chicago-based work, including Imagism. Smart Collecting is a fascinating work that chronicles the development of this unique collection and shows how a museum is always a work in progress itself.