Relevant and Responsive

The learning that happens at SCMA is active and empowering. Exploring and analyzing visual art sparks curiosity, encourages deep critical thinking, and provides a focal point for lively group dialogue and gallery experiences. By interrogating the museum itself, students can also expand their understanding of approaches to collecting, display, and interpretation.

Our core values are the foundation of this work: embracing the intellectual and creative potential of art and artists to inspire curiosity; self-reflection and an openness to question and change our practices so that we may be as informed and inclusive as possible; prioritizing opportunities to elevate and amplify diverse perspectives and voices; active listening with a commitment to continued transformation; ongoing, proactive staff learning and adapting; and compassionate interactions with visitors, collaborators, and each other.

We have many examples to share from the past two years of our vision and values in action, from reimagined galleries to exhibitions and programs that shine a light on multiple perspectives. It all relates to thinking about the collection as both a window and a mirror for the human experience in ways that are relevant and responsive.

The recent reinstallation of our third floor galleries was the result of deep listening to museum stakeholders—particularly Smith students and faculty but also people external to Smith—about what they valued in the prior installation and what they would like to see in the future. We heard a strong desire to think in a more intersectional way, to tell a less linear story of art history and instead one that represents the complexities of how artists engage with similar issues and ideas across a broader span of time, cultures, and media.

Our new, collaborative installation Worlds in Process: Art from the SCMA Collection opened in February 2024. The response has been extraordinarily positive and affirming. The underlying theme concerns how humans connect to their physical and social environments. This idea forms a throughline for the art on view, which is organized into four sections: Nature and Its Forms, Thresholds and Transitions, Extraction, and Technologies. But this framing is just one of many possibilities, as there are many ways to make meaning about and across works of art. While Worlds in Process marks the culmination of a comprehensive process, it also represents a new beginning for the museum; we will continue to mine the collection for the stories it holds and look forward to sharing those stories in myriad ways moving forward.

This interdisciplinary and interrogative approach factors heavily into our work with faculty and students, supporting class visits, and other teaching and learning with the art in our collection. Some faculty come to SCMA with a clear idea of how they would like to partner with the museum or what work they would like to reference; most are looking for guidance on points of intersection and relevant works of art given a particular course objective or context. Educator for Academic Programs Charlene Shang Miller calls it “learning to
museum”: an active pursuit of understanding that is object-centered, inquiry based, and meaningful through a range of experiences.

Every academic engagement at SCMA is unique and tailored to a specific set of goals. Over the past two years, the museum has worked with students and faculty within a wide range of courses, including ENV 207 Introduction to Environmental History, BIO 368 Understanding Climate Change Through Plant Biology and the Arts, ARH 110 Art and Its Histories, GOV 271 Global Cities, PHI 127 Indian Philosophy, SWG 291 Queer and Trans Visual Culture, THE 199 Theatre History, ENG 125 Introduction to Creative Writing, and SPN 220 Contemporary Cultures in the Spanish-Speaking World.

Our Winslow Teaching Gallery can accommodate multiple courses, with works of art remaining on view for extended periods of time. The Mellon Classroom provides space for further discussions, lectures and presentations as part of class visits. Academic engagement is not limited to works already on view, with access to works in storage made possible by SCMA’s dedicated and skilled collections management team: Chief Preparator Nikolas Asikis, Preparator Matthew Cummings, Exhibition Manager Kelly Holbert, and Registration and Preparation Assistant Leah Hughes, all led by Associate Director of Collections Management and Registration Robyn Haynie.

Additionally, our new and much improved digital database ensures that the entire collection is searchable and accessible to all. In 2023, the Museum Collections Leadership Council, comprising museum directors from the Five Colleges as well as Historic Deerfield, was awarded a two-year, $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to make critical improvements to a shared collections management system. Over the course of the project, and with the support of cultural advisory councils representing a range of expertise, the consortium solicited, received, and implemented feedback to make the database
more searchable using Library of Congress subject categories and culturally appropriate language. Not only do these essential improvements enhance access and discovery, but the networks created during the project also ensure that we are sharing authority with experts and community members with lived experience. The Five College Consortium administering the project is a model for the museum field in how it lowers infrastructure investment and operating costs while creating more opportunities for efficient, impactful regional collecting partnerships and cross-collection cataloguing initiatives like this one.
 
Another example of the power of partnership can be found in our 2024 exhibition Painting the Persianate World: Portable Images on Paper, Cloth and Clay, made possible through a collaboration between Professor Yael Rice of Amherst College and Yao Wu, SCMA’s former Jane Chace Carroll Curator of Asian Art, with the support of Smith College alumna Shreya Dwibedy ’22 and University of Massachusetts Amherst graduate student Roya Peighambarzadeh. The first comprehensive project at SCMA to examine Iranian and Indian art in multiple mediums—paper, cloth, and clay—the exhibition also brought new insights to public audiences about the role of these works in binding people and regions together over time.

VOICES

YAEL RICE
Associate Professor of Art and the History of Art and of Asian Languages
and Civilizations and Program Chair of Architectural Studies, Amherst College

Painting the Persianate World featured 50 painted images from Greater Iran and the Indian subcontinent across three media: paper, cloth, and clay. Focusing on objects created between the 13th and 19th centuries, the exhibition explored the meanings painting once carried and the afterlives of painted objects as they entered new collections during the 20th and 21st centuries. It also included two animations by contemporary Pakistani American artist Shahzia Sikander, underscoring the resonance that Persianate themes and idioms still hold today.

Perhaps most significantly for me, the exhibition offered the opportunity for collaboration across institutions and among a range of people. Students who enrolled in The Museum in the Digital Age, a course I taught at Amherst College in Fall 2023, used computational and analog methods to study the history of ownership (provenance), use, and meaning of a number of the objects in the exhibition. QR codes installed in the SCMA galleries allowed visitors to access the students’ digital essays. Post-Baccalaureate Fellows in SCMA’s Curatorial and Museum Education departments designed engaging activities that encouraged younger visitors to look closely at the paintings’ iconography. And last but not least, a Smith College student (now alumna) and a University of Massachusetts Amherst graduate student both played important parts in the initial stages of the exhibition’s planning. Just as manuscript illustrations, dye-painted textiles, and decorated ceramics played an important role in binding the regions of the Persianate world together, Painting the Persianate World served to bind students, staff, and faculty from the Five Colleges together.

One of the artists featured in the exhibition, Shahzia Sikander (born 1969), presented the 2024 Miller Lecture in Art and Art History. The Miller Lecture is an annual opportunity to meet and hear from leading practitioners in the fields of art and art history. Sikander is widely celebrated for her work that subverts Central and South Asian manuscript painting traditions as well as for her contemporary animations, two of which were included in Painting the Persianate World. The 2025 Miller Lecture was presented by Hannah Feldman, a historian and theorist with a special focus on modern and contemporary art in and about the Middle East and North Africa, who also contributed to SCMA’s publication for Younes Rahmoun: Here, Now. The museum is honored to host this endowed public lecture—established in memory of Dulcy Blume Miller ‘46 by her husband Michael Miller—which brings such important, relevant voices to campus.

VOICES

CLARA CHO WUN MA
Jane Chace Carroll Associate Curator of Asian Art

Looking at the art of Chinese born-American artist Hung Liu (1948–2021) with faculty members and alumnae sparked meaningful conversations, fostered colleagueship, and contributed new knowledge to the SCMA collection.

In April 2025, I collaborated with Sujane Wu, Smith College Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, to organize Excavating the Image: Dispersed Connections. Co-sponsored by the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute, this program brought together 16 faculty from the college’s Art History, Sociology, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Spanish, French, Africana Studies, and Psychology departments to engage with Hung Liu’s artistic practice and the themes of memory, temporality, and homeland in her work.

We were privileged to have Dr. Dorothy Moss ’95, the founding director of the Hung Liu Estate, give a public lecture at the beginning of the program. In her lecture, Dr. Moss discussed recent discoveries in the artist’s archive and shared how Hung Liu integrated traditional Chinese motifs, oil paint, and historical photographs into her works. Significantly, Dr. Moss unearthed the historical Chinese photographs that Liu used as sources for her painting The Judgment of Paris in SCMA’s collection.

Following Dr. Moss’s lecture, we looked at Liu’s The Judgment of Paris and prints Wildflower and Sisters, as well as historical photographs of women in the museum. We also read literature on migration selected by Professor Wu and discussed how migrants deal with time and space across cultures. These conversations with colleagues from different disciplines not only enriched my knowledge of Hung Liu’s artwork but also enabled us to share our common experiences and academic interests.

Another notable exchange of ideas happens regularly through our Excavating the Image series. In partnership with the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute, scholars gather to consider a work in the museum’s permanent collection from a variety of cross-disciplinary angles. On April 10, 2025, Smith alumna Dorothy Moss ’95, Director of the Hung Liu Estate, gave a public lecture on the artist and her archives, centering the artist’s painting The Judgment of Paris, 1992; this was followed by a thoughtful discussion with faculty fellows exploring issues of migration and viewership in Liu’s works. On April 11, the participating fellows visited the galleries to see her work in person, delving deeper into key topics of home, loss, and memory.

In our work at SCMA, our objective is clear: the more people invited to the proverbial table—sharing their stories, ideas, and lived experiences—the richer and more robust the discussion and learning will be.

top to bottom, left to right: Two community members on the third floor look at the painting Study for Migration of the Golden People, 2001, by Judy Baca. Photos by Derek Fowles Photography; 2023–2025 Post-Baccalaureate Fellows Kamala GhaneaBassiri (left), Julia Giguere (middle), and Chaia Leibowitz (right) discussing Alexis Callender’s Where Everything is Made From Within, 2019. Photo by Derek Fowles Photography; Smith students in the galleries during the November 2024 Art After Hours Senior Edition student event. Photo by Derek Fowles Photography; Students in DAN 171 Dance History-Political Bodies From the Stage to the Page, taught by Professor Lester Tomé, interpret Picasso with their bodies in the Worlds in Process installation. Photo by Charlene Shang Miller; Visitors photograph and engage with Nam June Paik’s Internet Dweller: btjm.twelve.jhgd on the third floor. Photo by Derek Fowles Photography; Students in AFR 202 Topics in Africana Studies-Art, Activism and Media, taught by Professor Traci-Ann Wint, converse in a small group discussion in the exhibition A Beacon to the World: Art from the Sylvia Smith Lewis ’74 and Byron E. Lewis Sr. Collection. Photo by Charlene Shang Miller; Students in ENG 125 Introduction to Creative Writing, taught by Professor Sarah London, write in response to artworks by Sandy Skoglund in the teaching gallery. Photo by Charlene Shang Miller; UMass Amherst graduate student Roya Peighambarzadeh discusses art in the exhibition Painting the Persianate World: Portable Images on Paper, Cloth and Clay. Photo by Derek Fowles Photography; Students in BIO 368 Understanding Climate Change through Plant Biology and the Arts, taught by Professor Jess Gersony, write responses to Maggie Puckett’s Future Under Climate Tyranny (F.U.C.T.) (A 4° C warmer world). Photo by Charlene Shang Miller; Associate Professor Yael Rice studies manuscript illustrations in the exhibition Painting the Persianate World: Portable Images on Paper, Cloth and Clay. Photo by Derek Fowles Photography; Artist and 2024 Miller lecturer Shahzia Sikander poses in front of her animations The Last Post, 2010 and Reckoning, 2020 in Painting the Persianate World: Portable Images on Paper, Cloth and Clay. Photo detail by Derek Fowles Photography; Photo of Clara Cho Wun Ma, Jane Chace Carroll Associate Curator of Asian Art. Two visitors stand in front of the recent acquisition Essex Boston & Family 1, 2019–2020, by artist Michelle Elzay ‘95. Photo by Derek Fowles Photography