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.
The Wing Sisters, Part III: The Wing Collection
Meredith Clowse ‘26 is an Art History Major and an Archives Concentrator at Smith.
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.
STUDENT PICKS | Whole Encounters: Partial Impressions
In application, what an artist chooses to depict in an encounter with their sitter is only an impression, not representative of the whole person being captured.
A History of Handwork | At The Lion's Cage
Although this image seems simple at first--an amateur drawing of a lion in a cage next to cut out photographs of two bored looking girls-- J.F. has used symbolic elements of Victorian culture to infuse it with meaning.
Announcing the Student Picks 2017-18 Winners!
Announcing the seven winners of the 2017-18 Student Picks Sweepstakes!
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?
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.
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.