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.

Olivia wearing a denim jacket with a bright pink background and framed with flowers.

Summer Curatorial Research Intern: Olivia White ’20 (UMass MA ’25)

November 11, 2024

As a master’s student in the History of Art & Architecture Department at the University of

How Essential Is Art?

When I started thinking about doing an exhibition on the Great American Depression a year ago I did not anticipate the exhibition being shut down because of COVID-19 and potentially reopening during an actual Recession.

Depression era cityscape; crowds of people

SCMAinsider: Staying Inside

Staying Inside is a new series on SCMAinsider, the museum’s blog. It will regularly feature contributions from SCMA staff and students about what we are into these days, be it a book, a work of art, a song, a podcast, a recipe, a way to get outside, a performance; anything, really, that we are holding close or that brings us comfort and connection right now.

Woman sitting on couch in living room with dog at her feet on the right, child looking through window at train passing by on the right

Mt. Holyoke College Professor Patricia A. Banks on Supporting African American Museums

In January 2020, Emma Chubb, SCMA’s Charlotte Feng Ford ’83 Curator of Contemporary Art, sat down with Patricia A. Banks, Associate Professor of Sociology at Mount Holyoke College. They discussed Dr. Banks’s research into what motivates people to participate in cultural life and her new book, Diversity and Philanthropy at African American Museums: Black Renaissance (Routledge, 2019).

The Sublime in the Mundane

in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the sublime was already on the decline. In the shadow of industrialization, nature ceded itself to humanity — that, or humanity encroached on nature so that it disappeared.

Cityscape, a river in the lower right hand corner, half sky, half city

Melancholy Dominance

With sparse, barren trees surrounding the homestead in an otherwise naked field, Barkin's illustration carries that sure sense of late autumn decay and the melancholy that never fails to accompany it.

Image of November Sunlight print - black and white image of two-story house with barn behind in center of large empty lawn, surrounded by trees and open sky

Enveloped Encroachment

Paul Dougherty's Road Through Trees in Sunlight takes the human-environmental relationship to early 20th century America. The Romantic, spreading to the United States, took to a new environment, adopting new representations as human exceptionalism spread.

Reddish-brown drawing of a dirt road lined with trees, sun coming through the branches

On the Threshold

John Crome’s Wooded Landscape (included in his Norfolk Picturesque Scenery Series) depicts the edge of a forest looming over a clearing. With billowing clouds in the receding landscape, the scene depicts a period of calm before a creeping storm — a storm one could read as human encroachment.

Black and white etching of a wooded scene on right foreground with a cloudy sky in the background

The Sublime in the Mundane: Human Encroachment in the Natural Landscape

As I become increasingly aware of anthropogenic environmental destruction, I find myself drawn to nature. It is in nature, in the intertwining body of roots and branches, air and light, that I find comfort amid the stresses of human life. Nature is pure. It is awe-inspiring. It is sublime.

Triptych drawing of classical statues adorned with flowers and vines - one standing, two reclining

Lavinia Fontana: Renaissance Artist

Earlier this year, the SCMA acquired two small portraits by the Italian Renaissance artist, Lavinia Fontana (1552–1614). These paintings are an important addition to the collection as the earliest works of art by a named woman artist. They also add a new dimension to the historic collection as objects that may not have been considered “fine” art at the time of their creation, but instead pertained more to the world of material culture.