Open reception for Beyond Boundaries: Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art at the Smart on March 28, 2:00pm-5:00pm.
Opening on March 29, 2026, Beyond Boundaries: Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art at the Smart foregrounds the University of Chicago’s pivotal role in studying and exhibiting contemporary Chinese art since the mid-1990s.
The Smart Museum of Art will present a retrospective of contemporary Chinese art in collaboration with CAEA.
Opening on March 29, 2026, Beyond Boundaries: Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art at the Smart foregrounds the University of Chicago’s pivotal role in studying and exhibiting contemporary Chinese art since the mid-1990s.
Alumna Amanda Block, Director of Curatorial Documentation and Research in the Office of the President and Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, will return to the University of Chicago to talk about her career trajectory since earning her BA and MA in art history from our department in 2015.
We invite you to join the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago for this upcoming lecture as part of the 2025-26 Smart Lecture series. The lecture is Thursday, April 16th in CWAC 157 at 5:00pm CT with a Q&A session and reception to follow.
Assistant Professor Jacobé Huet has been awarded a Research Fellowship from the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) for her research project “Elias Suraqui’s Le Mellah: Architecture, Philanthropy, and Photography in Casablanca”.
We are pleased to announce the publication of the second issue of CWAC Voices, featuring exhibition reviews selected by Prof. Mehring and visiting critics from her "Writing Art Criticism" seminar in fall 2025. Texts include discussions of Yoko Ono's retrospective at the MCA, solo shows of DoVA faculty members Bethany Collins and Phil Qian, and the Chicago Architecture Biennial co-curated by our very own Chana Haouzi.
Aden Kumler, Art History AB ‘96, where she studied with Michael Camille, and Professor of Medieval Art History at the University of Chicago from 2007 to 2020, has been named the 75th A.W. Mellon Lecturer in the Fine Arts.
Nicole L. Woods will be in conversation about her book Performing Chance: The Art of Alison Knowles In/Out of Fluxus (University of Chicago Press) with Christine Mehring. The Q&A will be followed by a performance of one of Alison Knowles’ works. Woods is a Los Angeles-based art historian and critics and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.
Art History PhD alumni Jennifer Sichel & Caroline Lillian Schopp will discuss their new books, Criticism Without Authority and In-action, respectively. They will be joined in conversation by Art History faculty Matthew Jesse Jackson. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion. RSVP HERE
About the Books:
Join Carl Fuldner and Rebecca Zorach for a program exploring glass lantern slides and the materiality of image archives.