SCMAinsider

SCMAinsider offers dynamic perspectives on the diverse collections and visions that shape the
Smith College Museum of Art.

We welcome contributions from all members of our community and seek to cultivate a range of
voices and experiences. If you want to contribute to the blog, please contact us at scmacuratorial@smith.edu.

Red and white I voted for sticker for the people's pop-up at the smith college museum of art

Welcome to the People's Pop-Up!

July 3, 2024

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

SCMA Congratulates Tryon Prize Winners Lola Anaya '24 and Yasmine Porath '24

Every year, the Smith College Museum of Art awards the Tryon Prize in Art and Writing. These prizes recognize the work of current Smith College students in installation, performance, video, sound, digital, internet and interactive art or writing related to a work at the museum.

Young girl dressed in black and young sheep in the front. Two figures dressed dressed in black sitting in the shade of a tree in the back.

Remembering Jay Bolotin (1949-2024)

Aprile Gallant is Mary Walcott Keyes 1931 Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs and Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs.

Jay Bolotin was a handful. To his credit, I think he would be pleased to be described as such. He was also multi-talented, generous, a brilliant storyteller, and a lot of other things besides. Like his art, trying to describe Jay is an exercise in the complete limitations of language.

Translating an Amharic Inscription on an Ethiopian Silver Cross in the Collection

Hildana Shiferaw ‘25 is an Engineering and Biology student. She helped translate an Amharic inscription that appears at the base of an Ethiopian Silver Cross from the 19th century that is currently on view in the installation Worlds in Process on SCMA’s third floor. Here, she shares her experience translating the inscription.

An image of a silver cross on display at the Smith College Museum of Art

Outside the Box: Frames to Focus on During Your Next SCMA Visit

Kay Horak ‘24 is a self-designed Art Conservation Major with a Mathematical Sciences Minor and Museums Concentration. She is the 2023-2024 Kennedy Museum Research Fellow in Art History at SCMA, working with Danielle Carrabino, Curator of Painting and Sculpture. Here, she shares some of what she’s learned about frames in the museum’s collection through her fellowship.

Colorful painting of a man dressed in black sitting in a chair

Yong Soon Min (1953-2024)

By Aprile Gallant, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs

SCMA and the larger contemporary art world lost a leading light this month with the death of Korean American artist Yong Soon Min.

Min’s work, in the words of curator and art historian Hong-hee Kim, “explores post-colonial discourses of immigration, exile, loss and confusion, as well as the ironies of dual identity. [...] Her multi-media art practice encompassing words, texts, drawing, photography and video is conceptual yet concrete, private yet political.”

Yong Soon Min installing Movement at the Smith College Museum of Art

New Acquisition: Hayal Pozanti's "A Liquid Echo" (2023)

“I’m still daydreaming, in a sense, and when I’m in my studio, I’m creating a new world for myself but I’m also proposing that we all partake in this new world together.” – Hayal Pozanti

Portrait of Hayal Pozanti, Vermont, 2023. Photo: Didem Civginoglu. Courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor © Hayal Pozanti

Silken Threads: A Journey Through Local History with a Student Museum Educator

As part of a new curriculum focused on local histories of silk in Northampton and Florence, fifth graders from the Campus School of Smith College took field trips to the Smith College Museum of Art (SCMA) and Historic Northampton to see examples of silk in art and historical garments. In collaboration with Campus School teachers Paul Matylas and Lisa Echevarria, SCMA's Educator for School and Family Programs Gina Hall, and I developed an original program that utilized the resources of multiple collections to engage students with local history.

Elizabeth Sacktor working with Campus School Fifth Graders, to look at Adoration of Shepherds by Erasmus Quinellius II

The Perceptions and Perspectives of Artist David Andrews

Kamala GhaneaBassiri, the Bodnar Curatorial Fellow at the Smith College Museum of Art (SCMA).

If you’ve visited the Smith College Museum of Art (SCMA) before, there's a decent chance you’ve noticed David Andrews at the front desk, hunched over a piece of paper, pulling out words from a tin box or shading in amorphous forms. David started working at SCMA as a Gallery Assistant (GA) over twenty years ago, shortly after moving to Western Massachusetts from Chicago.

Drawing of bark with words surrounding the drawing

Human Flourishing in Art Museums

Josie Wong ‘26 is a sophomore Art History major and Museum Studies concentrator. Here, she shares her experience in the Smith College Museum of Art (SCMA)’s interterm course MUX222: Art Museums as Institutions of Human Flourishing.

Students engaging in different experiences with Frankenthaler’s Blue Atmosphere II on the first class

In the Aftermath: Humanizing Mass Tragedy

Caitlyn Brabo '27 is a Cunningham Center Assistant at the Smith College Museum of Art

By Caitlyn Brabo

Middle aged woman with serious expression, short hair, earrings, wearing a suit, seated in a chair before a large out of focus painting. On the right, teenager in the same exact setting looking directly at camera

Musings from a Gallery Assistant

Portrait of May, Post Break-up by Shizu Saldamando

Welcome Marketing and Communications Fellow Julia Giguere!

Countless times in my life I have said, “I love going to museums!” When I travel, I always try to find a new museum to see. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts or the Sandwich Glass Museum on Cape Cod. Big or small, art or history, I just love seeing culture displayed.