Time flies, leaving its mark on the people and objects it touches. This exhibition explored how we try to capture, measure, and find meaning in the midst of time’s inevitable passage. Award-winning Chicago artist Antonia Contro selected books, manuscripts, and curiosities from the APS collections and juxtaposed them with her own artwork, including drawings, paintings, videos, and a sound installation.

In Contro’s words:

I have selected pieces from the library and museum’s extraordinary collections and placed them in conversation with my own art. They are bound in a variety of ways—situated in relationships that illuminate aesthetic similarities and contrasts. The exhibition weaves them together thematically and also presents them in ambiguous associations, inviting relative and subjective discoveries.

Time is the leitmotiv, a compelling organizing principle, the “search engine” that allows me to mine the veritable time capsule of APS…Time has shaped the venerable institution of the APS and its collections in infinite ways– the desire to preserve the past and understand the present and to pass those legacies to future generations, the race against time, and the simultaneous attempt to understand it are universal human yearnings. The quest for knowledge and the search for the meaning of life and explanations of the universe’s mysteries are inextricably linked to time.