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.

Welcome Museum Education Fellow Chaia Leibowitz!
How Would You Translate It?
Alicia Argueta ‘23 is a Sociology major with a Latinx American Studies minor. She is currently serving as one of the Co-Chair of Smith’s Latin American Students Organization (LASO). Her interests range from educational justice, community engagement, and climate change to art activism. In her free time you can catch Alicia watching Korean Dramas!
Studies in Museums J-term ‘23 Course: Provenance as a Key Issue
Mackenzie Peloquin ‘23 is a senior Art History major, Government minor, and Museums Concentrator. Mackenzie has completed curatorial internships at the Maine Historical Society in Portland, ME, the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, MA, and Historic Deerfield in Deerfield, MA.
Class Visit to MFA Boston: Exhibiting Asian Arts
Felicia Jiang 24’ is a history major and a philosophy minor. She studies Japanese and Russian and is interested in the history of cross-cultural communications.
“I Like,” “I Wish,” “I Wonder:” Reimagining SCMA’s Third Floor Collections Gallery using Visitor Evaluation
Interpretation and Educational Programming Assistant Emily Valin ‘23J discusses how visitor feedback is informing the museum’s reinstallation of its collections.
Who is Sitting in "Ancestral Spirit Chair"?
Grounded: Experiencing the Work of Younes Rahmoun at Smith and Abroad
Lorenzo di Credi's "Portinari Tondo": A Painting for a Medici Banker
Danielle Carrabino, Curator of Painting and Sculpture, highlights a recently acquired Italian Renaissance painting.
Installing Brought to Life: Painted Wood Sculpture from Europe, 1300–1700
Kelly Holbert, Exhibition Manager, gives a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the world of preparing and installing an exhibition.
On September 16, an exhibition opened at the SCMA that was different in appearance that most of the exhibitions that had preceded it. This time light was controlled and altered on every surface, from glass windows to partition walls, creating an inviting, dappled, green world filled with color and sound.
A curatorial research trip in Northern Europe
Henriette Kets de Vries the Manager of the Cunningham Study Center and the Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at SCMA went to Northern Europe last summer to learn more about our German drawing collection.
Smith College Studio Club
Always Been Here: Indigenous Artwork Reemerges from Storage
Isabel Cordova graduated from Smith College in 2019 with a degree in Studio Art, American Studies, and a concentration in Museum Studies. In this post, she reflects on her and Sydney Nguyen’s collaboration with Smith College Museum of Art (SCMA) as the Post-Baccalaureate Assistants for the Indigenous American Collections at Five Colleges Inc.
This post refers to the installation of pieces by Indigenous artists from SCMA’s permanent collection on view in the Art after 1800 America, Europe, Africa Gallery (third level).
Collecting for the future: Taniguchi Shigeru’s Three Colors Paint
Aprile Gallant, Mary Walcott Keyes 1931 Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs and Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs introduces a print by the Japanese artist Taniguchi Shigeru