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.

Lilly standing in a black and white tile bathroom and pulling a white, amorphous full-body suit up and over their head.

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.

About That Narrative: Joanne Leonard

Leonard’s interest in questioning photographic “truths” might serve as a way to tell a more accurate version of her family’s story by fracturing the materials at hand. 
images of women and children interspersed with handwritten text in white, images of red scissors, and handwritten and typescript diary notes

Expanding the View

'South Pass Wind River Mountains, Wyoming' came into SCMA's collection nearly 70 years ago, and our view keeps changing.
Desert mountain landscape; foreground of browns; midground of oranges, golds, and yellows; mountain horizon of golds, yellows, and blues. The sky is nearly cloudless.Groups of people – the size of ants – can be found in the valleys and mountainsides of the landscape.

From Home: An Interview with Matt Donovan

A conversation with Matt Donovan about The Map of Every Lilac Leaf: Poets Respond to the Smith College Museum of Art, a collaboration between the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center and the Smith College Museum of Art which was released earlier this week as a part of SCMA100, the Museum’s centennial celebration. We talked about how this project came together, what’s next for the Poetry Center, and whether he’s been writing in quarantine.
A large slice of yellow melon sits next to a pile of peaches. Some of the black seeds have fallen away from the melon and there is foliage behind the fruit. The colors are somber.

A Challenge to Practice Optimism

I offered a challenge to my friends and family in various backgrounds and colleges outside art history to engaged with two works of art from the 5 College Museum collection which reflect similar anxieties or sentiments we feel during the COVID-19 shutdowns. asked them to identify something positive in each image. I left the prompt open-ended as I wanted to encourage optimism to take a variety of forms.
This detail of Anne Morrow Lindbergh shows her bust. Slightly hunched over with a sad expression on her face, she wears a purple sweater and red scarf and looks slightly downward.

The conservation process of Still Life with Fruit, Meat, Pipe, and Goblets

  

Still Life with Fruit, Meat, Pipe, and Goblets, a 17th-century still life painting by Dutch artist Maria van Oosterwyck has been selected to be included in the museum’s centennial exhibition SCMA Then\Now\Next. It has been recently conserved by Birgit Straehle at the Worcester Art Museum. These images taken during and after the treatment show how she brought this work back to life.

Still Life with Fruit, Meat, Pipe, and Goblets by Maria van Oosterwyck (1630–1693)
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