About
SCMA is recognized as a leading academic museum, contributing meaningfully to Smith College’s mission to educate women of promise for lives of distinction and purpose. We welcome about 35,000 visitors a year, including Five College students, staff and faculty, and visitors from the region and around the world. The museum’s collection now comprises more than 27,000 objects, representing the diversity of art and material culture across periods and geographies.
Our mission
The Smith College Museum of Art cultivates inquiry and reflection by connecting people to art, ideas and each other. We do this by:
- Engaging people with firsthand experiences of art, artists and museum practice
- Collecting, researching, presenting and preserving an expansive collection of art in the service of learning, teaching and critical dialogue
- Fostering an environment that welcomes diverse perspectives and inspires imagination
Our commitment to diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion
We, SCMA’s staff, believe that diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion are vital to our mission and must inform all of our activities and decisions.
As part of Smith College, “We recognize that white supremacist legacies, historic and systemic, have affected and continue to affect not only Black lives but also those of many other races and identities.”—Smith O.E.I.
Art museums, including ours, have contributed to racist structures through choices of what artworks to collect and how, and whose stories about art and history are told and by whom. We are working to create a genuinely inclusive and anti-racist museum that reflects the diversity of the campus community that is at the heart of our mission.
We know this will take ongoing work. Steps we are taking now:
- Centering diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion in the museum’s collecting
- Ongoing anti-racism education for staff and board
- Active staff and board anti-racism working groups
- Developed core values for SCMA (below)
- Undertaking an audit of work to date to inform an equity plan
- Implementing anti-bias practices for all hiring
- Restructuring security and visitor services to strengthen safety for people and art and shift to a visitor-centered approach.
- Reviewed and updated security and visitor services hourly salaries to support equity and living wages
- Diversifying the vendors represented in the SCMA Shop
- Expanding the cultures and people represented through art on display
These actions contribute to the Smith College Toward Racial Justice plan and build on SCMA’s 2017–2022 Strategic Plan.
This work will evolve as we learn and as the needs of our communities change. We welcome your questions and feedback. Email our staff DEAI working group at artmuseum@smith.edu (current members are David Andrews, Martha Ebner, Lily Foster, Aprile Gallant, Louise Krieger, Ann Mayo, Charlene Shang Miller and Justin Thomas).
Our core values
The following are values we strive to uphold in our internal work culture and in interactions with our visitors, partners and collaborators.
- Connect art and people
- We embrace the intellectual and creative potential of art and artists to open dialogue and inspire curiosity.
- We embrace the intellectual and creative potential of art and artists to open dialogue and inspire curiosity.
- Question and change our practices
- We acknowledge that historically art museums, including ours, have centered on the lives and creations of a few to the exclusion of the many and have been built through colonialism and exploitation. We engage in active self-reflection and change to develop practices that resist racism, white supremacy, and inequality within our museum and the broader field.
- Share authority
- We prioritize opportunities to elevate and amplify diverse perspectives and voices—especially those of young people and students of all ages.
- We prioritize opportunities to elevate and amplify diverse perspectives and voices—especially those of young people and students of all ages.
- Listen actively
- We endeavor to listen actively with a commitment to continued transformation.
- We endeavor to listen actively with a commitment to continued transformation.
- Learn and adapt
- We support a culture of ongoing and proactive learning for staff and seek to explore critical histories about art in dialogue with our audiences.
- We support a culture of ongoing and proactive learning for staff and seek to explore critical histories about art in dialogue with our audiences.
- Be compassionate
- We strive to practice compassion in our interactions with fellow staff, museum visitors and other collaborators.
- We strive to practice compassion in our interactions with fellow staff, museum visitors and other collaborators.
Our history
Museum staff
Explore a complete list of museum staff
Annual Report & Strategic Plan
Explore SCHEMA, the museum's annual report, and learn about the SCMA Strategic Plan 2017–2022.
News & press
For news releases and press/media queries