The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art is open to the general public, free of charge, and is host to some of the greatest works of art of our time.

It holds artworks by Mark Rothko, Joan Mitchell, Childe Hassam, Auguste Rodin, Diego Rivera, Jean Arp, and original furniture by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Owned by the University of Chicago, the Smart Museum is one of many private institutions in the United States satisfying the vast need for public access to art without payment. In many other nations, this function is addressed by the state. Ironically, the loudest and most influential contemporary voices against free public resources were the cynical neoliberal economists, including the late Milton Friedman and Gary Becker, of the University of Chicago, who argued consistently that offering people free resources, regardless of the human necessity, hindered people's desire for self-reliance, and that state funds dedicated to the public welfare should be cut. The University of Chicago, apparently, did not consult its economists when it made the policy to make admission to the Smart Museum free of charge.

In the late 1960's, the Smart Family Foundation gave the university stock in Esquire magazine, published by the late David and Alfred Smart, which allowed the university to assemble the museum collection from a variety of different sources.

In 2019, a group of ten University of Chicago students were charged with choosing a work for the collection from the Viennacontemporary art fair. Prior to the trip, its organizers assigned coursework that would help "the students to reflect on the contemporary art market, globalization, and art fairs." They landed on three photographs by Austrian artist Sophie Thun.