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

October 30, 2025

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

Announcing the Student Picks 2017-18 Winners!

Announcing the seven winners of the 2017-18 Student Picks Sweepstakes!

African-American people dressed in white sit on a float holding gold picture frames

STUDENT PICKS | Psychic Playgrounds: Reshaping Reality

How do representations of daily life enact possibilities in other dimensions? What did I want these everyday spaces to be? How can these spaces be distorted under humans’ cerebral manipulation?

night, boy standing near a pole in the center of a series of yellow concentric circles

On Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s “Dressing to Go Out/Undressing to Go In” (or, Don’t Try This At Home)

The hurried, active quality of the photographs that comprise the work allows viewers a glimpse into what ‘motherhood’ could have looked like for a working female artist during one of the more pivotal moments of second-wave feminism in America.

95 small horizontal black and white photographs showing two young children dressing and being helped to dress in winter outerwear and then undressing and being helped to undress in a plain room with parquet floor, part of a crib, carriage and chair visible in the shots

Contemporary Black Women Artists in the Cunningham Center: Kara Walker

Walker’s work explores the violences of the history of slavery in the American antebellum South as she creates elaborate scenes of outlined slaves and masters, oppressors and the oppressed.

black cut-outs of a tree, a woman sitting underneath it smoking, and children sailing a toy boat on the water; text to the right of the cut-out images

Contemporary Black Women Artists in the Cunningham Center: Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems's work addresses racism, sexism, family relationships, class and power, her photographs spanning from intimate documentations of her family and community to powerful works that widely address the African-American experience.

African American man seated at a table with a lamp hanging overhead; holding a glass with left hand; tape recorder on table at left; telephone on table at right; smoke surrounding portrait; text at the bottom reads, "Jim, if you choose to accept, the mission is to land on your own two feet."

Contemporary Black Women Artists in the Cunningham Center: Lorna Simpson

Lorna Simpson rose to prominence in the art world in the 1980s for her art exploring black female identity and historical memory. Her work combines photography, text art and installation to create subtle and engaging works that are difficult to decode but meaningful in the effort it takes to understand them.

African American hand holding white flower in a vase with flower design on it; on the bottom of the image, the word "soulful" appears written in cursive

Welcome, Shanice!

Meet Shanice Bailey '17J, a recent Smith graduate and the new Brown Post-Baccalaureate Curatorial Fellow at SCMA!

close-up of African American child in light dress with puffy sleeves standing next to a table with a lace doily on it and holding an old celluloid telephone to her ear; along the bottom, cursive text reads, "half learned"

On View: The Hilary Tolman, class of 1987, Collection of Twentieth-Century Japanese Prints

In honor of the thirtieth reunion of the class of 1987, selections from The Hilary Tolman Collection--a landmark gift of Japanese prints from the 1950s to the present day--are currently on view in the Christ Gallery. Featuring works. from thirty different artists, this exhibition spans a wide variety of styles and subject matter within the realm of Japanese printmaking.

abstract, rectangles and squares, lower left rectangle black and white, to its right a red center darkening towards the square edges, over them a mottled leaf gold rectangle, at the upper right a mottled white rectangle and below it a gold leaf triangle

The Modern Machine

Charles Sheeler’s paintings and photographs of machinery were quintessential depictions of the American industrial age. Though they span a variety of time periods, the selected photographs in this cabinet—one of which is by Sheeler—capture a fascination with the aesthetics of power.