Much Unseen is Also Here: An-My Lê and Shahzia Sikander

About the Exhibition

All visitors are strongly encouraged to make a reservation here before visiting the museum.

Much Unseen is Also Here, an initiative of Toward Common Cause, brings together the works of two major artists who both consider the theater of the landscape, monumentality, cultural history, and representation.  

Probing monuments and identity, An-My Lê and Shahzia Sikander explore history’s embeddedness in our present. Lê’s Silent General (2015 – ongoing) presents large-scale views of places and people in the contemporary American landscape, while Sikander’s uses sculpture, drawings, and animation to examine representations of intersectional femininity that is prompted by questions of who monuments historically depict.  

Much Unseen is Also Here is a collaboration between the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago. The exhibition is part of 
Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change
, and The
MacArthur Fellows Program at 40 initiative, organized by the Smart Museum of Art in collaboration with exhibition, programmatic, and research partners across Chicago.  

The MoCP is supported by Columbia College Chicago, the MoCP Advisory Board, the Museum Council, individuals, and private and corporate foundations. The 2020-2021 exhibition season is sponsored by the Illinois Arts Council Agency, the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), the Efroymson Family Fund, and the Philip and Edith Leonian Foundation.

Much Unseen is Also Here has been generously supported through the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art.