Center for the Art of East Asia

Beyond Boundaries: Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art at the Smart

Smart Museum of Art, March 29–July 5, 2026

This exhibition foregrounds the University of Chicago’s pivotal role in studying and exhibiting contemporary Chinese art since the mid-1990s. In February 1999, Wu Hung, Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Chinese Art History at the university, opened his first exhibition at the Smart Museum of Art. Titled Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century (1999),  the exhibition – and many more Wu curated in the ensuing years – was field-defining and forged new avenues for situating Chinese art within a broader global contemporary framework. 

Taking these earlier exhibitions as points of departure, Beyond Boundaries: Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art at the Smart reflects on the enduring adaptability of contemporary art from China as it continues to grow within and beyond cultural and academic institutions. Bringing together artworks acquired by the Museum over the last three decades, archival materials, ephemera, as well as new work, Beyond Boundaries explores how artists navigate and challenge physical limitations across cultural, environmental, and political terrains. Through strategies of fluidity, they confront dominant social expectations and political hegemonies – not only within a rapidly transforming China, but also amid broader global uncertainties. In doing so, Beyond Boundariesinvites us to revisit fleeting moments, environments, and actions, and urges us to reconnect, return, and remember.

Beyond Boundaries: Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art at the Smart is organized in collaboration with the Center for the Art of East Asia (CAEA). The exhibition is curated by Ellen Larson, CAEA Associate Director, with support from curatorial researchers Peter Yuheng Deng (MAPH ’25), Dora Xintian Hou (BA ’26), and Wenshu Wang (Chinese Museums Association Curatorial Fellow). 

For more information, visit Beyond Boundaries: Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art at the Smart.