This long-term installation emphasizes the strengths of the MCA Permanent Collection, highlighting art from the most important movements that have happened since the museum’s founding in 1967–minimalism, post-minimalism, conceptualism as well as art made in Chicago and works from earlier periods, especially surrealism. More than 125 works are presented in a roughly chronological framework that showcases clusters of objects by artists whom the MCA has collected in depth, such as Alexander Calder, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman, and Robert Smithson. Also included are key works by such artists as Ann Hamilton, René Magritte, and Ed Paschke. The exhibition is organized by Lucinda Barnes, MCA Curator of Collections, and is sponsored by a grant from the American Express Company. Additional support for the exhibition is provided by the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund Collection Accessibility Initiative.

Drawn entirely from the MCA Permanent Collection, In the Shadow of Storms: Art of the Postwar Era from the MCA Collection presents a view of significant changes in artistic practice since the final years of World War II. In light of the major shifts in social, political, and economic attitudes over the last fifty years, this selective panorama of art celebrates the MCA Collection and offers a multifaceted view of a half century of changing issues and perspectives.

No military conflict since 1945 has matched the breadth of devastation and global involvement of World War II. Nevertheless, the decades following and falling in the shadow of the Second World War ­ from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent demise of the Soviet Union ­ have witnessed momentous realignments in international political, economic, and social structures. In many instances these changes have been brought about by nonmilitary means.

Following a roughly chronological path, In the Shadow of Storms points out correspondences to and disjunctions from the events of our time. There has always been an imprecise, fluctuating relationship between art and the ongoing sequence of historical events. Rather than reflecting a mirror image of our times, contemporary art takes the form of a shadow, indicating shapes and meanings within our ever-changing human consciousness.

This exhibition is sponsored by a grant from the American Express Company. Additional support is provided by the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund Collection Accessibility Initiative.