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 intro text for the show is on the far left and a portrait of a person with gilded gold frame to the right of the intro text.

Thinking Through Drawing: On View through September 7, 2025

Henriette Kets de Vries is the Associate Curator and Manager of the Cunningham Study Center for Prints, Drawings and Photographs.

Tolman Collection: Hiromitsu Takahashi

Hiromitsu’s beautifully vibrant and slightly playful prints are a modern take on ukiyo-e, a type of Japanese woodblock printing developed during the country’s Edo period.
Kneeling warrior in black robe holding a black and white umbrella aloft in his proper right hand.

Never Exhausted

Over the course of his life, Paul Landacre became a master of wood engraving, and a standard for those exploring this printmaking medium.
Nude woman with long hair holding onto mane of a rearing black horse, dark clouds in sky, dark spiky grass below horse.

Standing Turk

The French academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme is known for his hyper illusionistic style, which he used to create detailed paintings of life and culture in the newly discovered East during the nineteenth century.
Standing man facing left in coat and turban with hands pressed together at his waist.

Buzkashi from the series Musharraff

An integration of Persian and Indian influences, 'Buzkashi' by Saira Wasim resonates with early Mughal ruler portraits and painting traditions.
man with four arms seated on a cushion surrounded by clowns in uniform carrying an upside-down goat

Figure and Image

The collection of Selma Erving is comprised of 540 drawings, 74 prints, and 100 illustrated books, the majority of which come from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Needless to say, picking less than twenty objects to hang was a Herculean task, especially for someone as interested in the time period and style that Ms. Erving seemed to favor as I am.
yellow and white silhouette of a woman looking over her right shoulder, against a light blue and white sky. small purple flower in top right corner.

Building and Survival

Dr. Kurt Lang and Dr. Gladys Engel Lang, distinguished scholars 
in the fields of communication,
 media, and public opinion, and emeriti professors of sociology 
at the University of Washington, Seattle, have promised their collection of prints, watercolors, and
 drawings to SCMA.
Shoreline with pier extending toward the left and city beyond

Now You See Me

Portraiture, a seemingly biographical and documentary genre, is often more farce than fact.
three quarter length portrait of an older man in long white wig, coat, vest, breeches and white stockings, seated legs crossed, hands together on proper left thigh, a small stand to his proper right holding paper, three ink wells and feather pen, curtain behind to his proper right

A Discerning Eye

As is often the case when I am conducting research on works of art or individuals, I came across far too much fascinating information on Selma Erving to relegate to a label with a limited word count.
older woman with hair tied up, wearing a floral top, looking to her left

Camera Exotica

his month’s student curator and guest blogger Niyati Dave '15 discusses her show “Camera Exotica: Clichés, Counter-Narratives and Cultural Clashes” which will be on view FRIDAY, April 3 from 12-4 PM in the Cunningham Center.
Mountenous landscape with civil war soldiers. The silhouette of a disembodied caricature of a Black woman – two breasts, a head with bullet holes, an arm which reach up and to the left on the white margin – are overlaid.

Three Songs of Devotion

Qureshi’s choice to represent the male figure as a basic outline and the female figure in detail calls into question traditional gender roles in Mughal painting, a field typically dominated by men.
Man and woman seated; large bird traced over the image.

Hippolyte Arnoux

The French photographer Hippolyte Arnoux, who documented the construction of the Suez Canal in Egypt, is also known for his ‘ethnographic portraits’ of women often representing fake sultanas.
Seated woman with veil looking into a mirror, trees in the background

Kiss Cross

Ghada Amer and Reza Farkhondeh, artists of the Middle Eastern diaspora, create collaborative works that highlight the female figure through use of embroidery, paint and stenciling.
two figures kissing under bare trees with large pink and purple X's over them
TOP