CHICAGO.- The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, presents Objects of History: The Boone Collection of Japanese Art, on view through June 12, 2005. Often in exhibitions of cultural and historical materials some objects are designated as “art” (e.g. paintings and prints) and others as “material culture” (e.g. textiles and shoes). This intimate exhibition draws from more than 3,500 Japanese objects in the Boone Collection of the Field Museum in Chicago – traditionally a place for “material culture” – and brings scroll paintings, woodblock prints, and decorative arts objects from the later Edo to Showa periods (18th-20th centuries) to an art museum context. Scrutinizing these terms for their aesthetic, cultural, and historical issues, this exhibition examines what this nomenclature tells us about the Boone Collection and museum and collection studies in general. The exhibition was curated by Hans Thomsen, University of Chicago Instructor of Japanese Art History, and James Ketelaar, University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies Director, in consultation with Richard A. Born, Smart Museum Senior Curator.