Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago

As the fine arts museum of the University of Chicago, the Smart Museum of Art is a site for rigorous inquiry and exchange that encourages the examination of complex issues through the lens of art objects and artistic practice. Designed by Chicago-born architect Edward Larrabee Barnes in 1972, the limestone building’s modernist design consists of two buildings—the Smart Museum of Art and the Cochrane-Woods Art Center—linked together by a covered walkway and entrance. Both face the Vera and A.D. Elden Sculpture Garden, architecturally highlighting the artwork housed inside the museum and outside the Smart’s walls. This includes the current on-view exhibition, "Theaster Gates: Unto Thee," centered around Gates’s self-designated practice as a “keeper of objects,” featuring off-site tours of many of the artist’s physical sites and spaces, rooted in urbanism, land art, and placemaking. The museum interior includes a vaulted lobby ceiling, often displaying a site-based lobby art installation, and academic study room spaces, which allow students up-close examination of the over 17,000 objects in the Smart’s permanent collection.