Smith's current work explores the relationships between contemporary art and its wider settings, within a world picture that he believes is characterised above all by its contemporaneity. His findings are being presented in a series of books. These include "The Architecture of Aftermath" (University of Chicago Press, 2006); "Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, postmodernity and contemporaneity" (edited with Nancy Condee and Okwui Enwezor, and published by Duke University Press, 2008); and "What is Contemporary Art?" (University of Chicago Press, 2009). He is working on "Contemporary Art of the World: Late Modern to Now" (Laurence King and Pearson/Prentice-Hall, 2011).