SCMAinsider

Henriette Kets de Vries is the Associate Curator and Manager of the Cunningham Study Center for Prints, Drawings and Photographs.

Art has always been instrumental in challenging the establishment. Historically, well-known European artists such as Francisco Goya or Honoré Daumier tackled hard issues by holding up a mirror and calling people out. Making art like this is never without danger. These controversial artists risk censure, imprisonment, or banishment, often working in total obscurity for the good of the cause.

Anna Ziegler is a senior Art History major and works at the Cunningham Center at SCMA. Here, she shares a day spent at MacLeish for the January-term course MUX222: When Contemporary Art Goes Outside.

As a community health organizer, I worked with SCMA over the J-term to develop and refine mindfulness projects in the museum space. Bridging wellness and art at Smith has been on my senior year bucket list! This opportunity refreshed and added on my perspectives, as a peer health educator, a museum visitor, and a museum staff member. As SCMA is working towards diverse ways to interact and engage the student community, I am excited to see how mindfulness experiences change visitors’ perspectives on wellness, artworks, museum spaces, and more!

Olivia Sarno ‘25 is a World Literatures and Spanish Double Major, and a Museums Concentrator. She has worked as a Student Museum Educator at the SCMA since 2022. 

Claire Enerson (‘27) is an Anthropology and Italian Double Major, and a Museums concentrator. She works at the SCMA as a Student Museum Educator.

What if museum education strategies used on artworks could also apply to plants?

At Smith College, two student educator groups work to engage visitors with collections on campus. The Student Museum Educators lead K-12 school group tours in the SCMA galleries and the Botanic Garden Student Educators support student involvement in Lyman Plant House. I organized a collaborative workshop with these two cohorts in February.

Clara Cho Wun Ma is the Jane Chace Carroll Associate Curator of Asian Art

At the end of January 2025, billions of people across the world, from China to Vietnam to
diaspora communities in the U.S., celebrate the Lunar New Year, the beginning of a new year on
the lunisolar calendar. How do people use this calendar to measure time? And in Chinese art,
how does artwork tell us about Chinese perception of the movement of the universe?

Aprile Gallant is Mary Walcott Keyes 1931 Curator of Prints, Drawings and

Yarra Berger is a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the History of Art and Architecture. Her research focuses on organized labor, decolonial movements, and identity formation in 19th to early 20th century American art and visual culture. 

Henriette Kets de Vries is the Associate Curator and Manager of the Cunningham Study Center for Prints, Drawings and Photographs.

"Drawing is putting a line around an idea." 

          — Henry Matisse

Z Stevens, 25J, is an English Major and a Museum Concentrator. They are the student Collections Assistant.

A museum’s collection comes with an archive of information surrounding it. And for just over one whole calendar year, I, Z Stevens, have had the financial and source information of the entire SCMA collection at my mercy!

That might be a slight exaggeration. 

As a master’s student in the History of Art & Architecture Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, I sought a summer research internship that would offer flexible hours and help develop my skills as an aspiring art historian specializing in the long nineteenth century. The SCMA fully met these goals, with the added benefit of attentive and caring mentorship from Danielle Carrabino, Curator of Painting and Sculpture.

Julia Giguere is the 2023-2025 Post-bacc Fellow in Marketing and Communications.

Why can’t I select works for an exhibition? 
Why can’t I be a documentary filmmaker? 
Why can’t I design signage?  

These questions echoed in my head as I started research for my fellowship capstone project.

To answer one, I can select works for an exhibition, and so can you. I designed the People’s Pop-up, SCMA’s first exhibition curated by and for our audiences. Using digital polling, you can choose the pieces included in this food-themed “potluck”.