Institutions and Imaginaries

Smith Stephanie

Socially engaged art, though its transformative practice, shapes the institutions that surround it. And in a city famous for both its physical and political structures, few creative communities are as deeply intertwined with a city's framework than those in Chicago.

This volume focuses on how artists and others have worked with, within, and sometimes in opposition to large Chicago institutions, such as public schools, universities, libraries, archives, museums, and other civic bodies. Drawing from a broad range of interdisciplinary sources, it explores the far-reaching effect of socially motivated art on urban life. It grounds recent history within a longer arc of civic self-fashioning, from the Columbian Exposition of 1893 to Jane Addams's Hull House to John Dewey's legacy in arts education. The collection also examines the relationship between the city's image and the types of artistic work that flourish within its boundaries and resonate far beyond them.

"Institutions and Imaginaries" is part of the new Chicago Social Practice History series, edited by Mary Jane Jacob and Kate Zeller in the Department of Exhibitions and Exhibition Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).

About the Author

Stephanie Smith is deputy director and chief curator at the Smart Museum of Art, an affiliate faculty member of the Department of Visual Art at the University of Chicago, and a founding member of its Open Practice Committee. She is an editor of the journal "Afterall", to which she is also a regular contributor. She curated the exhibition Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art.

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