Chicago’s fall arts and gallery season highlights

The Smart Family Foundation provided funding in 1967 to construct an art museum at the University of Chicago, and the resulting institution opened seven years later with works from various academic departments and gifts from foundations and individuals.

Its collection now numbers more than 15,000 objects that range across a panorama of mediums, periods and origins, and it has become an invaluable component of Chicago’s art-museum scene with groundbreaking exhibitions like “Monster Roster” in 2016.

The Smart Museum of Art (its named changed from Smart Gallery in 1990) will celebrate its half-century mark with “The 50th: An Anniversary Celebration,” an exhibition that will open Sept. 24 and run through March 2, 2025. (smartmuseum.uchicago.edu)

The show will range from earlier selections like a Greek figure from the second century B.C.E., and an 1893 painting by American impressionist Childe Hassam to modern and contemporary works by artists like Marcel Duchamp, Alice Neel, Faith Ringgold and Mark Rothko.

The more than 100 paintings, works on paper, sculptures and archival materials will be shown in five galleries, each loosely representing a decade in the museum’s history and exploring a theme like the institution’s academic engagement or support of Chicago artists.

“People don’t know about our collection,” said Vanja Malloy. “Our collection is actually a great way to tell stories about the evolution of the Smart, because the Smart isn’t some static entity. We’ve grown a lot and adapted a lot over those 50 years.”

Malloy became the Smart’s director in October 2022 after serving three years as director and chief curator at the Syracuse (N.Y.) University Art Museum. Before that, she was a curator at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst (Mass.) College and Chester Dale Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

She was drawn to the Smart in part because she believes it is a good place to continue the kinds of cross-disciplinary projects she began with her doctoral investigation into the interchange of art, science and technology in the 20th century. “I really wanted to find a home in an academic museum where I could be valued for that type of research, that type of outside-the-box thinking, and I found that in Chicago,” she said.

Malloy wants to bring stability to an institution that has seen several leadership changes at the top in recent years, reestablishing relationships with supporters and community partners and reprioritizing the museum’s permanent collection, as this 50th-anniversary show does.

Coming up in Fall 2025 is a major mid-career survey devoted to Theaster Gates. “Theaster is such an important part of not only the Chicago art scene,” she said, “but also the University of Chicago as a faculty member and someone who has a long presence at the university.”

Here is a look at 10 more art and museum exhibitions worth exploring this fall:

Through Dec. 22, “Agency: Craft in Chicago from the 1970s-80s and Beyond,” Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, 2320 W. Chicago (uima-chicago.org). The 1970s and ‘80s saw a new generation of artists bringing a fine-arts sensibility to traditional crafts like ceramics and textiles. This exhibition explores this development in Chicago, paying particular attention to how it affected what organizers call “those on the margins,” like immigrants, artists of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Through March 16, 2025, “Theaster Gates: When Clouds Roll Away,” Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island (rebuild-foundation.org/exhibitions). Gates ranks among the most respected artists working in Chicago, with a long list of exhibitions in distinguished venues across the world. For this presentation, which will fill three floors of this once-abandoned bank building on Chicago’s South Side, he will show work that draws on the archive of the Johnson Publishing Co., which chronicled the lives of Black Americans in magazines like Ebony and Jet.

Through March 23, 2025, “Chicago on the Nile,” The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum, University of Chicago, 1155 E. 58th (isac.uchicago.edu). Since 1924, Egyptologists and others from the University of Chicago have engaged in recording scenes and inscriptions on the walls of ancient structures in the Nile River Valley, starting with the 3,000-year-old temple of Pharaoh Ramesses III near Luxor, Egypt. The museum marks the centennial of this continuing project, known as the Epigraphic Survey, with this display of photographs, artifacts, artworks and publications

Sept. 27-ongoing, “The Chicago Archaeopteryx,” 1400 S. Dusable Lake Shore Dr., (fieldmuseum.org). A little more than two years ago, the Field acquired one of the most important fossils ever discovered, the link between dinosaurs and birds. That fossil, known as the Chicago Archaeopteryx, will be shown in a new permanent 430-square-foot installation in the Elizabeth Morse Genius Hall of Dinosaurs alongside other fossils and contextual elements to help visitors understand the ancient Jurassic realm from which this key specimen comes.

Oct. 19-Jan. 6, 2025, “French Neoclassical Paintings from The Horvitz Collection,” Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan (artic.edu). Neoclassicism was an artistic style that dominated France from the late 1700s through the 1820s and put an emphasis on large-scale history paintings, with scenes taken from history, mythology and religion. On view in this compact old-master exhibition are 27 paintings from what the museum calls the preeminent private collection of French 18th-century art in the United States.

Oct. 19-July 27, 2025, “Dressed in History: A Costume Collection Retrospective,” Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark (chicagohistory.org). The museum houses a world-renowned costume and textiles collection with more than 50,000 objects, including examples by couturiers like Yves Saint Laurent and Gianni Versace. This exhibition marks the 100th anniversary of this holding and the people who have shaped it with 70 rarely seen objects from glamorous gowns to showy sneakers.

Oct. 24-Jan. 5, 2025, “Photographing Frank Lloyd Wright,” Driehaus Museum, 50 E. Erie (driehausmuseum.org). Wright has gained worldwide acclaim as perhaps the greatest architect this country has produced, and some of his finest buildings can be found in the Chicago area. Less widely known is that Wright was also photographer. His early images plus those of others who documented his work and influenced how he was perceived are showcased in this groundbreaking exhibition.

Oct. 26-Feb. 10, 2025, “Jeremy Frey: Woven,” Art Institute (artic.edu). Born and raised on the Passamaquoddy Indian Township Reservation in Maine, Frey has spent his career building and expanding his tribe’s basket-weaving traditions. This mid-career survey will feature more than 50 baskets he has created in the past two decades, objects the museum describes as “delicate, intricate and sensuous.”

Nov. 7-Feb. 15, 2025, “Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now,” Wrightwood 659, 659 Wrightwood (wrightwood659.org). This touring show recontextualizes traditional Himalayan art by juxtaposing it with painting, sculpture, video, installation and works in other media by 28 contemporary artists like Sonam Dolma Brauen, Meena Kayastha and Jupiter Pradhan. It was organized by New York’s Rubin Museum, which is marking 20 years of highlighting art from this vast Asian region.

Nov. 9-March 23, 2025, “The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970-2020,” Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E. Chicago (mcachicago.org). Painting has been falsely declared dead by critics and cultural observers for decades, yet it continues to be a vibrant creative vehicle as it has evolved and adapted to the changing world around it. This group exhibition, featuring more than 40 artists, looks at the impact of computers, cameras, television, social media and other technology on the medium.