“Through its holdings and its programs [the Smart] will offer countless and infinitely varied possibilities for the study of the visual arts. The discovery and the exploration of those possibilities, very much in the great tradition of experimentation and creative research which so characterizes the University of Chicago, is the task of the faculty, staff, and students now and in the future.”—Edward A. Maser, founding director of the Smart, 1974
The David and Alfred Smart Gallery was dedicated on October 22, 1974, and opened to the public the following day. The intimate modernist structure, by Chicago-born architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, was, in the words of University President Edward H. Levi, “designed to display rather than detract from the works exhibited.”
