Contemporary Art

The E. Darin Smith Contemporary Art Collection is a theme-based collection that is currently focusing on issues of authorship and authority in contemporary culture. The artists represented in the collection ask questions through their art such as, “Who owns a work of art?”, “What is the ecosystem in which art is created, and who makes the decisions that ultimately lead to certain artists being recognized and shown, while others are left marginalized?”, “How does the art world reflect the same values and mechanisms of control and bias that are found throughout society?”, and “How do we define authorship in a world where visual imagery is constantly being appropriated and re-contextualized in ways the original author may have never intended?”