Darkness Revisited: A Collection of Private Pleasures October 21, 2010

Organized by University of Chicago students, this intimate exhibition of prints from the Smart Museum's collection revisits the themes of 'The Darker Side of Light: Arts of Privacy, 1850-1900' and offers a new look at the shadowed interiors and private introspections of late nineteenth-century art. In these works, which date between 1850 and 1920, artists demonstrated a willingness to experiment with interior-focused and sometimes taboo subject matter. The small scale of the objects is appropriate to the domestic space--where they could be contemplated at leisure--and they touch on private experience and darker subject matter such as nostalgia, suffering, love, adultery, and drug addiction. The works are loosely grouped into several sections: views of the city, artist portraits, images of women, and seduction and its consequences.