Department of Visual Arts • Resources

The University of Chicago – Department of Visual Arts

The graduate and undergraduate studios are located in Midway Studios, the landmark working quarters and residence of Lorado Taft, one of the central historical figures in the artistic life of Chicago at the turn of the century. Although these studios are where most art students spend the greatest amount of time, it is only one of several centers for the study of the Visual Arts on the campus at the University of Chicago. These facilities, which provide an invaluable extension of the Studios, include:

The Art History Department
One of the leading departments in the country whose fields of expertise cover the full range of Eastern and Western art history from ancient to contemporary art. The department offices are located in Cochrane-Woods Art Center which also houses a comprehensive slide collection and a computer station for digital imaging.

The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art
An outstanding teaching museum with a large permanent collection of painting, sculpture, prints, drawings, photographs, and the decorative arts.

The Oriental Institute Museum
One of the pre-eminent collections of Near Eastern art in the U. S., with artifacts and large-scale sculpture come from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria-Palestine, Persia and Anatolia.

The Renaissance Society
Founded in 1915, it is one of the leading North American venues for international contemporary art, with changing public exhibitions in its galleries throughout the year.

The Film Studies Center
This facility (under the auspices of the Committee on Cinema and Media Studies) contains over 2500 films and video cassettes. Its collection is broadly historical with an emphasis on American cinema.

The Franke Institute
Founded in 1990 to establish a research center for humanistic thinkers to do their work and a catalytic initiative to bring together for examination and discussion the best current ideas on humanities topics.

The Contemporary Art Workshop
The Contemporary Art Workshop seeks to provide a forum in which artists, art historians, and art professionals can engage in sustained discussion of the social, economic, and aesthetic underpinnings of recent art practice. Graduate students, faculty, and curators from myriad disciplines are engaged in projects that interlace with these themes. The Workshop will work to create this meeting place for a broad spectrum of participants drawn from within the University of Chicago and without. CAW aims to generate a space in which theory and practice will be brought into productive contact in a supportive yet critical atmosphere.

Other resources at the University include the Regenstein Library, Medical Library, Crear Library, and the Chicago Humanities Institute.

Last Updated on Sept 1, 2007

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