The Wing Sisters, Part I: Background and Early Life
Meredith Clowse ‘26 is an Art History Major and an Archives Concentrator at Smith. This research project is the culmination of her work as the Kennedy Fellow at SCMA the 2025-2026 academic year.
The Smith College Museum of Art was founded to support Smith’s mission of undergraduate women’s education, and has been shaped in turn by the contributions of alums. Two such influential alumni were the sisters Caroline and Adeline Wing. They were early Smith graduates; Caroline was class of 1896 and Adeline was class of 1898. The paintings they donated to SCMA in the mid-twentieth century are foundational works to the collection.
While this is of course important to SCMA’s history, what really intrigued me about the Wing sisters was how they differed from other donors. In my capacities as Kennedy Fellow this year, I’ve spent some time exploring the curatorial files of artworks. This focus made me pay attention to the donors of works in SCMA, and what caught my eye about the Wings was the fact that they were listed together as two single women. Nearly all the other Smith alum donors I had seen in this era were often listed as “Mrs.” someone, with their own name added in parentheses at the end. A preliminary search of the “Misses Wing” brought up more questions. In addition to never marrying, they held a permanent address in their hometown of Bangor, Maine until they died. From these pieces of information, they didn’t seem like the typical art donors from this era.
So who were Caroline and Adeline Wing? Why did they decide to donate so many important works of art to Smith? And what can we learn about them from what they collected and why?
To begin to answer these questions I started digging into their past. Caroline Wing was born first in Valparaiso, Chile in 1873, where her father, Wilson Wing, ran a copper mining business (Down East Magazine, July 1996, page 80). Both he and his wife, Sarah Flint Wing were from New England, and lived in Chile for a time. Adeline was born in 1876 once the family had moved back to Bangor, Maine. Both of the girls went to Bangor High School, with Adeline noted as graduating with first honors in 1893. At this time in her life, Adeline was predicted by her classmates as working in "Bellevue Hospital in Washington D.C.” as an adult and having “gained a wide reputation for kindness and gentleness to patients,” alongside a few classmates (06-17-1893, the Bangor Weekly Commercial). From these clippings, Adeline seems to have been a young woman who was recognized with some potential at this time.
Caroline graduated from Smith in 1896 and Adeline did so two years later in 1898, so it's likely that their time there overlapped. In their college years, Caroline wrote a column for the Bangor Commercial Newspaper on “Dramatics at Smith” in February 1897, which detailed the different drama companies around campus at that time. This involvement in theatre would continue throughout her life, as after school she founded and was the first president of the Shakespeare Club of Bangor. Adeline left a scrapbook of photos of her college days in the Smith College archives. Her images show her participation in Smith traditions like Ivy Day, as well as evidence of a life that looks very similar to Smithies now. There are a few images of a dorm room decked out in postcards and trinkets, pictures of her posing with friends, and images of her professors.
Photos from: Adeline Wing. Photo Albums. n.d. Box 1567. Classes of 1891-1900 records, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-01022, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
The sisters’ time at Smith influenced their adult lives in how they continued to pursue interests fostered in this time in their education. It clearly was impactful enough for them to return as older women and decide to contribute to the next generations of Smithies through their donations.
To find out more about the Wing Sisters, a bibliography and additional resources are linked here.