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.
Outside the Box: Frames to Focus on During Your Next SCMA Visit
Kay Horak ‘24 is a self-designed Art Conservation Major with a Mathematical Sciences Minor and Museums Concentration.
STUDENT PICKS | Abstractions in No Man’s Land: A Future Without Us
Whether explicit or symbolic, these works provide the opportunity to consider a world without us, how some populations are already being erased by our ways of life, and our current relationships to the land.
The Grecian Bend | 体 Modern Images of the Body from East Asia
From the Western standpoint, his photographs were unfiltered, realistic depictions of “the Orient.” As an anthropology major, I am fascinated with how Beato’s photographs embody this cross cultural exchange and set a precedent for how the West viewed the East.
Flickers and Blinks: Confronting the Weight of Movement
Our movement merits contemplation. Begs it as a sign of warning or even impulse. Reading the viewers' responses I saw this again, and I saw it anew. Even while moving we are always in a position to heal, love, and acknowledge. Remembering this, especially as a product of the diaspora, carrier of colonial freight, as a person of color, is not only empowering - it is redemptive.
STUDENT PICKS | Hijacked Art
The contemporary artists in this show have interpreted the work of deceased artists who cannot condemn or laud the appropriation of their work. Together, these prints show how artists can reference these masterworks while acknowledging the systems of oppression they are tied to.
Remembering Patrick Nagatani
A nationally respected photographer with work held in museums across the country, Nagatani’s work dealt with themes of science, nuclear power, Japanese-American history, and New Mexican culture. He represented and explored these themes through otherworldly images, saturated prints and flat collages that were magical and sometimes unnerving.
STUDENT PICKS | Flickers and Blinks: Confronting the Weight of Movement
Movement is a point of change. When we move - in abstract or tangible ways, voluntary or forced - we engage with the changing of place, time, people, and culture.
Color and Heat | Bolívar y Juana Azurduy
A uniformity in the smiles of every figure illustrated made me wonder if there was another story behind those fixed expressions. I suspected “Bolívar y Juana Azurduy” was not as straightforward as it seemed.
Picasso and His Muse
Marie-Thérèse served as Picasso’s muse, appearing in painting after painting in endless incarnations; as a still life of fruit, a voluptuous woman asleep in an armchair, a Greek goddess, or an innocent child. Although Picasso had many women in his life, Marie-Thérèse is undoubtedly the most frequently represented woman in his artwork.
Transforming Dish Towels: Anne Ryan's Collages
Anne Ryan didn’t start making collages until she was 58, but once she found the medium, she embraced it eagerly.
A History of Handwork | Giant Woman (Empire State)
Gripping a paintbrush in one hand and the Empire State in the other, the woman dominates a space synonymous with male-centric corporations and class inequality.
A History of Handwork | Ausencias
During the late 1990s, González-Palma created photographic collages illuminating the grief of indigenous peoples by utilizing symbols of loss, trauma, fear, and violence in contrast with beauty and human fragility.
A History of Handwork | Untitled #14
Czech photographer Michal Mackü created Untitled #14 using an unusual technique called gellage —a fusion of the words gelatin and collage— which he invented and perfected during the late 1980s and ‘90s.