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.

Charcoal drawing on cream paper of a woman with bobbed dark hair sitting cross-legged in a chair. She wears a button-up shirt, tie, knee-length skirt, and heeled boots with tiny buttons up the side.

Art as Archive: Curating Germany, 1918-1945

Rebecca McClung is a Ph.D. student in the history department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

"Dante Day" is March 25

Danielle Carrabino is the Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Smith College Museum of Art.

Profile of man with his head wrapped in a red cloth and black branch of leaves

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.
abstract, diagonal swatches and lines forming a rough diamond shape

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.
3/4 portrait of a woman turned towad the right with her face toward the viewer. Her hair is down and she wears a high-necked lace-trimmed dress

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.
Ivory carving of a cow and calf.

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.
"Black Futures at Smith" text in purple on a dark, cosmic background. Purple likenesses of Kimberly Drew, Thelma Golden, Jenna Wortham, and Amanda Williams.

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.
With his left hand, a man holds the head of one man kneeling, bound man; with his right hand he holds a sword above the head of another, who appears to hold his arm still; other figures watch from behind rows of pink pillars; red and white tiled floor and black arched doorway on the back wall

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."
freestanding sculpture; blue painted wood base, two sticks rising up out of the base, smaller colorful sticks balanced on top of those two sticks

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?
three side-by-side screens appear with two sisters in black shirts, the artist on the right, her sister on the left, with the artist's young niece in a white shirt in the center, wearing white headphones against a light background; all three have long dark hair

From the archives: Never Exhausted

From the archives: Cunningham Center Brown Post-Baccalaureate Curatorial Fellow Maggie Kurkoski '12 on master wood engraver Paul Landacre.
Nude woman with long hair holding onto mane of a rearing black horse, dark clouds in sky, dark spiky grass below horse.
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