In addition to over 800 works on view in the Modern Wing, the following special exhibition will offer dozens of new insights into the multi-layered experience of modern.

Cy Twombly: The Natural World, Selected Works 2000–2007
Through October 11, 2009
Galleries 182–184
The first exhibition of Twombly’s work in Chicago in over 50 years, this collection of more than 30 dynamic works showcases the artist’s enduring concern with the natural world—specifically seascape, landscape, light, and flora. Equal parts commanding and muscular, tentative and languorous, the new work testifies to the ongoing creative vitality of one of the greatest American artists of our time.

Zarina Bhimji: Out of Blue
Through January 3, 2010
Gallery 186
One of the most critically celebrated artist’s films of recent years, Bhimji’s video registers impressions of present-day Uganda through light, color, and texture to bear witness to the recent past.

On the Scene: Jason Lazarus, Wolfgang Plöger, Zoe Strauss
September 19, 2009–January 24, 2010
Gallery 188
The third exhibition in the On the Scene series of exhibitions, this show brings together the most dynamic work of Lazarus (born 1975), Plöger (born 1972), and Strauss (born 1970), including some of the department’s recent acquisitions.

Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage
October 10, 2009–January 3, 2010
Galleries 1–2
Decades before the avant-garde, aristocratic Victorian women were combining photographs and watercolors in whimsical ways. This exhibition showcases rare and marvelous photocollages that challenged the strict conventions of aristocratic society and changed the meanings of photography.

James Castle: A Retrospective
October 10, 2009–January 3, 2010
Galleries 124–127
This exhibition marks the first comprehensive museum exhibition of the work of James Castle, an artist from rural Idaho who, despite undergoing no formal or conventional training, is especially admired for the unique homemade quality, graphic skill, and visual and conceptual range that characterize his works.

Apostles of Beauty: Arts and Crafts from Britain to Chicago
November 7, 2009–January 31, 2010
Regenstein Hall
Featuring nearly 200 objects in a wide variety of media, this exhibition showcases works by the movement’s most notable practitioners—from William Morris and Charles Robert Ashbee to Gustav Stickley and Frank Lloyd Wright— drawn exclusively from institutional and private collections in the Chicago area.

Konstantin Grcic: Decisive Design
November 19, 2009–January 24, 2010
The first exhibition in the United States to explore the work of this innovative German designer includes his fresh takes on familiar industrial design—from desks and chairs to lamps and salad servers.

William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video 1961–2008
February 20–May 16, 2010
This exhibition is the artist's first retrospective in the United States and presents a comprehensive selection from nearly 50 years of image making. It brings together Eggleston's famous and lesser-known works, particularly his black-and-white images from the late 1950s and 1960s, which helped shape his color photography.

Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913–1917
March 20–June 6, 2010
Featuring recent groundbreaking research on the works Matisse created during this pivotal period, this exhibition of approximately 100 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints presents a fundamental reassessment of Matisse’s experimental working through new, “modern” pictorial means and its impact on the rest of his career.