Expanding the 50th: Shared Stories offers an updated presentation of the institution’s anniversary exhibition to explore the histories that have made up the Smart Museum over the last five decades. Drawn entirely from the permanent collection—which has grown from nearly 2,500 works in 1974, when the Smart opened its doors, to over 17,000 objects today—the exhibition is organized loosely chronologically to illuminate how the institution, its mission, and collection, have continued to change.

In honor of its anniversary, the Smart has commissioned four artists to create new works as interventions in the Museum’s and our collective histories. These new works by Andrea Carlson, Bethany Collins, Caroline Kent, and Mary Mattingly, will be presented during Expanding the 50th and serve as models for the way the Museum can continue to elevate new voices and engage a variety of stories.

Bethany Collins is an Alabama-born, Chicago-based conceptual artist. Drawing from extensive archival research and grounded in a text-based artistic practice, Collins’s work offers a critical lens on American history and the nuance of racial and national identities.

Caroline Kent is a Chicago-based visual artist, who builds on personal experiences and cultural background to explore the relationship between and limits of language, translation, and abstraction through an expanded painting practice.

Expanding the 50th: Shared Stories Galina Mardilovich, Curator, and Megan Jackson Fox, Director of the Feitler Center for Academic Inquiry and Head of Education