The Art Institute strives to present exhibitions and programs that increase knowledge and appreciation of a variety of artists, media, styles, and periods having regional, national, and international significance. Exhibitions and programs result from in-depth research and planning and take into consideration the museum's diverse audience. The museum depends on partnering with corporations to be able to provide visitors with these experiences, which is at the heart of its mission. For additional information on sponsorship, please call George Martin at (312) 443-3125 or e-mail gmarti1@artic.edu.

Sponsorship opportunities are available for the following exhibitions:

Altered and Adorned: Using Renaissance Prints in Daily Life
April 30–July 10, 2011

Altered and Adorned: Using Renaissance Prints in Daily Life is a multimedia exhibition that will examine afresh the innovations of the earliest printed artworks, their makers, and, especially, their users. Renaissance prints were objects that were meant to be used. From wall-sized woodcuts and playing cards to minutely detailed engravings, they underwent constant handling and were carefully perused. Owners glued them into albums, books, and boxes or onto walls; illuminated them with color and candles; and built three-dimensional objects out of them. This daily handling is demonstrated by some of Art Institute’s printed treasures between 1465 and 1615, including two new museum acquisitions: a 15th-century French Nativity woodcut pasted into an armored coffer and an impression of Albrecht Dürer’s Men’s Bath with paper and ink almost as fresh as when Dürer first printed it. While some prints were already regarded as masterpieces during the Renaissance, they were only beginning to be collected. Artists experimented with print to multiply their output and spread their signature style throughout Europe. The exhibition and catalogue consist of four sections starting with an introduction, which briefly contrasts prints reproducing famous, inaccessible paintings with functional everyday examples pasted into gift and traveling boxes.

_{Workshop of the Master of the Very Small Hours of Anne of Brittany (Jean Ypres?). The Nativity, in coffer, c. 1490. George F. Harding Deaccesions Fund. Purchased with funds provided by Mr. and Mrs. William Vance; The Amanda S. Johnson and Marion J. Livingston Fund.}

Uta Barth
May 14–August 14, 2011

This exhibition will present new works by Uta Barth (born Berlin, 1958; lives and works in New York City) created specifically with a presentation at the Art Institute in mind. Since the early 1990s, Uta Barth has been examining photographic and visual perception. Her series Ground and Field presented photographic blurs caused by focusing the camera on an unoccupied foreground; these lushly colored works tested connections between photography and painting and the line dividing descriptive clarity from hazy memory. A more recent series, white blind (bright red), explored after-images as literal and metaphorical modes of perception. Barth is particularly interested in site-specific creations, and we expect she will be attracted to the permeability of interior and exterior spaces in the Modern Wing’s Bucksbaum Gallery.

_{Uta Barth. ... and to draw a bright white line with light (Untitled 11.1), 2011. Courtesy of the Artist; 1301 PE, Los Angeles; and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York. © Uta Barth, Courtesy Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, and 1301PE, Los Angeles.}

Eija-Liisa Ahtila: The House
June 24–October 23, 2011

Since the opening of the Modern Wing in May 2009, the Art Institute offers a state-of-the-art gallery dedicated solely to the exhibition of works in film, video, and new media. Located on the first level, adjacent to Griffin Court, this gallery has been named after the Chicago collectors Donna and Howard Stone. The Department of Contemporary Art directs the gallery’s programming with a special focus on a roster of international artists, including groundbreaking artists whose work has never been shown in the museum. The selection highlights a range of approaches to the mediums of video and film while importantly foregrounding the diversity of the Art Institute’s collection. The upcoming schedule includes:

• June 24–October 23, 2011: Eija-Liisa Ahtila (Finnish, born 1959). The House, 2002.
• April 6–July 15, 2012: Alfredo Jaar (Chilean, born 1956). Muxima, 2005.
• August 3–November 11, 2012: Rodney Graham (Canadian, born 1949). Torqued Chandelier Release, 2005.
• December 14–March 24, 2012: Isaac Julian, (English, born 1960). The Long Road to Mazatlán, 2000.

_{Eija-Liisa Ahtila. Still from The House, 2002. © Crystal Eye Ltd, Helsinki. Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris.}

Avant-Garde Art in Everyday Life
June 11–October 9, 2011

This focused exhibition of around 100 objects, almost all from the Art Institute collections, will center on six European innovators—John Heartfield, Gustav Klutsis, El Lissitzky, Ladislav Sutnar, Karel Teige, and Piet Zwart—who made extraordinary contributions in the fields of poster and book design, advertising, and the manufacture of household objects. Beginning around 1910, pioneering artists decried the isolation of creative activity within an academic citadel and demanded that true art revolutionize and modernize daily life. New ideas in painting and sculpture demolished that citadel from within, but they also spilled out into the wider world, merging enthusiastically with demands fashioned by the industrial marketplace, the nascent mass media, and urban popular culture. Avant-Garde Art in Everyday Life highlights the work of a handful of exceptionally influential people from this culturally explosive period.

_{John Heartfield, cover of Kurt Tucholsky, Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles, 1929. Bob and June Leibowits Collection.}

Windows on the War: Soviet TASS Posters, 1941–1945
July 31–October, 23 2011

Opening in July 2011 at the Art Institute of Chicago, this exhibition commemorates the 70th anniversary of the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany on early Sunday morning, June 22, 1941. Posters published in the Soviet Union will be examined alongside posters issued in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe, as well as the United States, Great Britain, and its Commonwealth nations. This comparative approach will foster an examination of the fascinating dialogue that existed between the propaganda posters of all the nations involved in the conflagration. The thematic juxtaposition of posters highlights similarities and differences not only concerning the posters’ aesthetics, iconography, and symbolism but also how they embodied the ideologies and aspirations that war engenders, regardless of which side they represent. While the exhibition’s focus is primarily on posters, relevant paintings, photographs, documentary material, and memorabilia will be included, as well as documents illuminating the expression of Russian cultural life staged in the United States during the war.

_{Kukryniksy (Mikhail V. Kupriyanov, Porfiry N. Krylov, Nikolai A.Sokolov). Thunderous Blow. June 17, 1942.}

Light Years: Conceptual Art and the Photograph, 1965–1977
December 11, 2011–March 11, 2012

There is a general consensus that new art of the 1960s and 1970s was heavily invested in photography. Not since the promotion in the 1920s of photomontage, photograms, and the New Vision had so many painters and sculptors turned to photography for a renewal of artistic practice. Light Years: Conceptual Art and the Photograph, 1965–1977 is the first major museum exhibition to examine that vanguard involvement in its full scope. Light Years will present around 130 works, including slide projections, sculptural ensembles, photographic canvases, artists' books, and multi-media installations, from approximately 50 key figures of that era, among them Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Laurie Anderson, Eleanor Antin, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Mel Bochner, Victor Burgin, Jan Dibbets, Valie Export, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Douglas Huebler, Sol LeWitt, Ana Mendieta, Gordon Matta-Clark, Bruce Nauman, Adrian Piper, Allen Ruppersberg, and Ed Ruscha.

_{Alighiero Boetti (Italian, 1940–1994) AW:AB=L:MD, 1967.}

Belligerent Encounters: Graphic Chronicles of War and Revolution, 1500–1945
July 31–October 23, 2011

Drawing from the Art Institute’s permanent collection, this exhibition presents portfolios and suites of prints complemented by individually published sheets and the occasional drawing with themes related to war and revolution. Dating from 1633 to 1924 and comprising various aspects of war and revolution through three centuries by numerous distinguished artists, this display will serve as an overture to the concurrent exhibition Windows on the War: Soviet TASS Posters at Home and Abroad, 1941–1945, highlighting aspects of the Soviet Union’s Great Patriotic War on the Eastern Front.

Bertrand Goldberg: An Architecture of Invention
September 17, 2011–January 15, 2012

In fall 2011, the Department of Architecture and Design of the Art Institute of Chicago will present the first American retrospective exhibition of architect Bertrand Goldberg (1913–1997), featuring over 100 original architectural drawings and models for such iconic works as Marina City (1963), Prentice Women’s Hospital (1974), River City (1982), as well as important examples of his graphic, furniture, and interior designs. Goldberg has been long recognized for his dramatic sculptural forms and innovative engineering for urban high-rise residential buildings in Chicago and large hospital and educational complexes throughout the country. This exhibition highlights the strength of the museum’s comprehensive collection and archives of Bertrand Goldberg’s work and comes at a time when his ambition to expand his role as architect will offer multiple points of contact with the multidisciplinary practice of today’s architects and designers.

_{Bertrand Goldberg. Marina City: Perspective Sketch, 1985. The Archive of Bertrand Goldberg, gifted by his children through his estate.}

Exposure
September 3, 2011–March 3, 2012

Focusing on contemporary artists, the exhibition series, Exposure, explores the diverse range of work produced by a new generation of photographers as well as advancing the Art Institute of Chicago’s commitment to collecting and exhibiting dynamic work by emerging artists. Most recently, the series (previously titled On the Scene) featured works by Jason Lazarus, Wolfgang Plöger, and Zoe Strauss. As testament to the series’ increasing success and popularity, attendance nearly doubled that of the previous year, hosting more than 100,000 visitors during the run of the show. As an ongoing series, Exposure, works to promote the visibility of contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago, given that at least one museum-owned work by each of the three featured artists is included in every exhibition. As part of the effort to engage visitors and provide educational programming, both the featured artists and curators provide insightful public talks in conjunction with the exhibitions. Related press releases, public openings, educational programs, and related media coverage also serve the dual purpose of amplifying the visibility of the current exhibition and promoting increased awareness of our permanent collection of contemporary photography.

_{Zoe Strauss, Untitled (If You Can Dream It You Can Do It), 2009. Photography Gala Endowment; restricted gift of anonymous donor, Anstiss and Ron Krueck, Vicki and Bill Hood. Courtesy of Bruce Silverstein, © Zoe Strauss}

The Three Graces
October 29, 2011–January 22, 2012

The snapshot is frequently regarded as the most personal and private form of the photographic genre commonly referred to as vernacular. Its potential to substitute for memory, preserve a moment, and idealize a scene has enabled photography to become a ritualized part of daily life. To this end, as quickly as the snapshot’s seemingly endless promise was recognized, formal patterns in composition, presentation, and gesture emerged in the everyday images taken by families and friends. This exhibition will present approximately 500 such snapshots from the collection of Peter J. Cohen, whose vast collection of anonymous vernacular photographs spans over 50 years. For almost 20 years, Cohen has been collecting these discarded, largely private images and meticulously organizing them into typologies based on common themes that he has observed among the images. The group of snapshots chosen for this exhibition was assigned the title The Three Graces, as each image features three women posed together. These will be presented alongside an 18th-century print/drawing bearing the same title from the Art Institute’s Prints and Drawings collection.

focus: Sharon Hayes
November 9, 2011–March 11, 2012

Focus is an ongoing contemporary art series inaugurated in May 1987 devoted to the display of a single artist’s work. This series highlights artists of local, national, and international significance who have not received extensive public exposure in the Midwest. In May 1998, the museum launched a re-defined, updated series of exhibitions designed to highlight new work by emerging international artists. Over the past several years, artists such as Stan Douglas, Mark Manders, Roni Horn, Steve McQueen, Anri Sala, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, William Pope.L, and, most recently, Monica Bonvicini, have created new and/or site specific work for the focus series. The series periodically shifts to the presentation of historically significant yet overlooked or lesser known bodies of work by artists such as Arnold Odermatt, Michael Asher, Mel Bochner, and Richard Hawkins.

Spencer Finch: Site-Specific Work
November 2011–April 2012

The Department of Contemporary Art is currently organizing a site-specific project by American artist Spencer Finch for the Modern Wing. Aptly positioned on the 3,400-square-foot open-air Bluhm Family Terrace, the installation features a solar powered “lunar landing module” that uses sunlight to charge batteries, which in turn power the module to "glow" the color of moonlight at night. The module will be an intriguing foil to the city skyline, as it stands on the terrace, visible from Millennium Park to the north and the Michigan Avenue corridor.

Roy Lichtenstein Retrospective
May 26–September 3, 2012

Presenting more than 100 of the artist’s most definitive paintings and sculptures, this exhibition will give equal consideration to all periods of Lichtenstein’s oeuvre. These eras range from the classic early Pop paintings through Brushstrokes, Art Deco, and Modern, from Mirrors and Entablatures, Reflections, Interiors, and Chinese Landscapes to other lesser known series, such as his explorations of Futurism, Surrealism, German Expressionism, and the American West. The exhibition will also include a gallery devoted to drawings and alternative media—such as Rowlux and editions—in order to frame the artist’s rich and expansive practice. Nearly 15 years after Lichtenstein’s death, the project will present new scholarly assessments of the artist’s work and its enduring legacy.

_{Roy Lichtenstein. Mirror in Six Panels, 1971. Anstiss and Ronald Krueck Fund for Contemporary Art, facilitated by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, and temporary funding from the Frederick W. Renshaw Acquisition Fund.}

Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity
June 30–September 22, 2013

Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity will be the first exhibition to focus exclusively on the ways in which artists in France in the 1860s and 1870s used fashion to communicate the idea of modernity. At a time when designers like Charles Frederick Worth were transforming how clothing was made and marketed into the first embodiments of the modern fashion industry, artists too were responding to cultural and consumer changes. Supporting this new investigation will be a judicious selection of costumes, photographs, fashion plates, advertisements, and other printed materials from the period. These pieces will serve to enhance the context of the vanguard and bring to life the sartorial nuances of dress and accessories that artists used to convey their modernity as well as that of their subjects. This exhibition will be shown at the Art Institute after traveling from the Musée d’Orsay (September 20, 2012–January 6, 2013) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (February 19–May 27, 2013).

_{Édouard Manet. Woman Reading, 1879/80. Mr. and Mrs. Larned Coburn Memorial Collection.}

The Royal Treasures of Jaipur
November 2013–January 2014

In collaboration with Princess Diya Kumari and the royal family of Jaipur, the Art Institute of Chicago is delighted to be organizing an exhibition featuring objects from the royal collection. This assemblage will consider the development of the city of Jaipur from the time of its founding in 1727 under Sawai Raja Jai Singh II (r. 1699–1743) to its modernization under Raja Ram Singh II (r. 1835–1880). Through artifacts from both the City Palace Museum in Jaipur as well as some key objects from other public and private collections—such as paintings and manuscripts, photographs, textiles and carpets, musical instruments, weapons and armor, decorative arts, and jewelry—the exhibition will demonstrate how the arts and crafts were integrally connected to the planning of Jaipur, with each discipline allocated its own physical space in the city, and showcase the development of the city from its founding to the time of its last reigning monarch, Man Singh II, in the mid-20th century.

_{Bust of a Lady, 18th century, Indian, Rajasthan, Jaipur. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper.}

From Feast to Famine: The Arts of Ireland in North American Collections, 1640–1840
November 23, 2014–February 8, 2015

From Feast to Famine: The Arts of Ireland in North American Collections, 1640–1840 will be a major exhibition of fine and decorative arts both made and/or owned in Ireland; various works of furniture, decorative silver, and paintings reveal the Irish as serious collectors of fine arts. The Art Institute has become the home for a notable group of objects with Irish histories, and this spectacular collection of art has the potential to serve as a catalyst in bringing together related works from other North American collections. Consisting of approximately 250–300 objects, the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue will serve as a lasting record of the project and will provide for a significant contribution to Irish studies.

_{Thomas Bolton. Monteith, 1703. Bequest of Mary Hooker Dole.}