Photo: Dan Dry

Stephanie Smith became Director of Collections and Exhibitions and Curator of Contemporary Art at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art in 2006. In this role she oversees curatorial affairs while retaining her focus on recent art. Smith is also an affiliate member of the university’s Department of Visual Arts. Smith joined the Smart’s staff in 1999 as Associate Curator and previously served as Assistant Curator at the Rice University Art Gallery and Curatorial Assistant and, initially, Education Assistant at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston. Smith holds a masters degree in art history from Rice University.

Over the past seven years Smith has focused the Smart’s contemporary program on thematic exhibitions that play off the museum’s university context. She has developed many of these projects through collaboration with artists who address critical issues within contemporary culture. Through such exhibitions the Smart has supported new work by artists including Dawoud Bey, Mark Dion, Peter Fend, Free Soil, Laurie Palmer and Wendy Jacob, People Powered, Dan Peterman, and Temporary Services, among others. Both rigor and hospitality matter to Smith, and she has worked with artists and museum educators to extend exhibitions through programs ranging from potlucks, hands-on workshops, and lectures, to new artist-led university courses. Smith also developed new strategies for the museum’s contemporary collection and acquired works by artists including Arturo Herrera, Kerry James Marshall, Adrian Piper, Song Dong, and Zhang Huan.

Smith’s recent work on the intersection of art and sustainability extends a longer interest in socially engaged public practice. In addition to curating the exhibitions Ecologies (2000, catalogue) and Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art (2005, catalogue, now traveling), she has written on the topic for Parkett and contributed an essay on art museums and sustainability to Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook.

www.smartmuseum.uchicago.edu

Previous Next Close	Installation view from Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art at Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago. Previous Next Close	Installation view from Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art at Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago. Previous Next Close	Interactive installation from Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art at Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago. Previous Next Close	Installation view from Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art at Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago. Previous Next Close	At a community design workshop held during Beyond Green's demonstrating ways to improve the built environment in an area adjacent to the University of Chicago's campus. Previous Next Close
Cover of exhibition catalogue Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art, 2005 Photo: Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago	Nils Norman Ideal City, Research/Play Sector, 2005 Photo: Tom Van Eynde	People Powered Transport I: Loop and Soil Starter, 2005 Photo: Jim Newberry	Free Soil F.R.U.I.T., 2005 Photo: Tom Van Eynde	Dan Peterman Excerpts from the Universal Lab, 2005 Photo: Tom Van Eynde	Art and Sustainability Laboratory, October 2005 CommunityDesignModel Photo: Stephanie Smith