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The Museum is named in honor of brothers David (1892–1952) and Alfred (1894–1951) Smart, who built an innovative publishing business in Chicago.
The brothers launched the sophisticated men’s fashion magazine Esquire in the heart of the Great Depression and followed it up with Coronet, a pocket-sized magazine with the slogan “infinite riches in a little room,” and Verve, an oversize avant-garde quarterly that featured original art by Matisse, Chagall, and Picasso. In the postwar years, they also produced short instructional movies through Coronet Films—titles like “How to Be Well Groomed,” “What to Do on a Date,” and “Are You Popular?” that shaped generations of students.The brothers established the Smart Family Foundation with a gift Esquire stock. The foundation’s first major philanthropic gift, in 1967, was to the University of Chicago to establish an art museum.
The David and Alfred Smart Gallery was dedicated on October 22, 1974, and opened to the public the following day. The intimate modernist structure, by Chicago-born architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, was, in the words of University President Edward H. Levi, “designed to display rather than detract from the works exhibited.”