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.
From Form to Symbol: An Aesthetic and Cultural Interpretation of a Tang Dynasty Mirror
Gengwei Guo (he/him) is a second-year M.A. student specializing in Chinese painting and calligraphy at UMass Amherst.
CHM 100 Visits the Cunningham Center
CHM 100 is the chemistry for non-science majors offering from the chemistry department. It covers all the important introductory chemistry subject matter using art objects from the museum as illustrations for chemical principals.
Student Picks: Lo! Medieval Muslim & Christian Art
Many of the oldest works on paper in the Cunningham Center are, unsurprisingly, religious manuscripts.
Agnes Martin: On a Clear Day
The enigmatic Canadian-born American artist Agnes Martin spent her long life and career purging her mind and art of all conceptual thoughts, living and working by inspiration alone in the pursuit of beauty and purity.
Persephone: Rebirth of Spring
Holly Trostle Brigham (Smith College class of ’88) explores her own identity through the solitary female figure, and during the 1990s focused on women through the lens of ancient mythology.
Smith Monuments (Wo)Men
These men and women volunteered often without any kind of army experience, to go out in the field to protect and restitute Nazi looted art. They were culled from all kinds of museums and art institutions and Smith College was not left behind.
Student Picks: Soulful Rebellion
Just like any other form of art, graffiti can invoke a great range of feelings.
Tell your ART STORY
This past semester, the Smith College community welcomed our new president, Kathleen McCartney, with open arms. The Museum celebrated her recent inauguration with ART STORIES, a special exhibition featuring art that has left a lasting impression on the widespread Smith community.
Objects in Limbo
A look behind the scenes can show how easily human error or simple forgetfulness can lead a piece of art into limbo, into an existence without cataloging, captioning, or even a proper home.
Brice Marden: The Grid and the Sea
Known as a “Romantic Minimalist,” his extremely reductive visual language of monochromes, lines, and grids may at first appear similar to that of his Minimalist contemporaries of the 1960s and ‘70s, but Marden never completely abandoned the accidental or idiosyncratic gesture characteristic of Abstract Expressionists.
Photography in Ottoman Istanbul
At the beginning of the 19th century, improved travel by train and by steamship offered Europeans greater access to Turkey and to Constantinople, then the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
Of Birds and Fourteen Year Olds
Nusra Latif Qureshi is a leading figure in the contemporary miniature scene, having studied the art at the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan.
Portrait Gallery of Distinguished American Citizens
The Cunningham Center owns a particularly interesting set of silhouettes, done by an artist named William Henry Brown.