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 Lilly Watson, Our New Assistant Museum Educator
Hello everyone! My name is Lilly Watson (they/them) and I am the new Post Baccalaureate Assistant Museum Educator here at SCMA.
Shinoda Tōkō (1913–2021)
We are saddened to acknowledge the March 1 death of the pioneering artist Shinoda Tōkō, regarded by many as the most important woman artist in Japan.
Where are all the Women Artists?
In honor of Women’s History month and International Women’s Day (March 8), this blog identifies four recent acquisitions of historic art by women: Lavinia Fontana, Elisabetta Sirani, Amile-Ursule Guillebaud, and Maria Ellenrieder. It also examines why SCMA, like most museums, lacks art by women.
Divine Nature: Two Dutch painted landscapes side by side, part I
Henriette Kets de Vries discusses two paired Dutch landscape paintings from the Then\Now\Next exhibition. This week, part one with Jan van Goyen's Landscape View Of Rijnland (1647).
The Year of the Ox
Yao Wu is SCMA’s Jane Chace Carroll Curator of Asian Art. As we enter the Lunar New Year of the Ox, she calls out anti-Asian racism that has escalated drastically in this pandemic.
From Home: An Interview with Camille Bacon ’21
Camille Bacon ’21 speaks about her experience seeing ‘Black Refractions’ at SCMA last year, the upcoming event she is organizing to bring Kimberly Drew ’12, Thelma Golden ’87, Jenna Wortham, and Amanda Williams together virtually, and her honors thesis exploring the expectations of Black artists and Black art.
Chinese Jades in the Newly Reinstalled Ancient World Gallery
Yao Wu writes about a project last year, before the pandemic hit, of reinstalling the museum’s Ancient World gallery to provide a more global perspective.
A Pair of Paintings in SCMA Then\Now\Next
One of my favorite pairings from 'SCMA Then\Now\Next' is separated by nearly five centuries: a Cubist painting by Picasso and a small Renaissance panel painting.
Jo Ortel ’83 on the Work of Truman Lowe
"I have to say, I have very little time anymore for art that hangs politely in museums. I really think that there has to be some connection with the current issues, and the environment seems, to me, to be among the most important."
About That Narrative: Hương Ngô
As the only audiovisual piece in my series on artworks addressing memory, the video poses a compelling question: how do speaking and listening contribute to our recollections of the past?
From the archives: Never Exhausted
From the archives: Cunningham Center Brown Post-Baccalaureate Curatorial Fellow Maggie Kurkoski '12 on master wood engraver Paul Landacre.
From the archives: Vanguards of Ukiyo-e: The Women of Modern Japanese Printmaking
This historic 'SCMA Insider' post from 2018 is about trailblazers: coming of age during World War II, Iwami Reika and Naoko Matsubara were two of the first women ukiyo-e woodblock printmakers in Japan.
From the archives: T. Frantisek Simon
We hope you enjoy this historic post from 2015 by Maggie Hoot '16 about the prolific, intriguing, but little-known Czech printmaker T. Frantisek Simon.
