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.

January at SCMA: Museums and Meditation at MacLeish

April 17, 2025

Anna Ziegler is a senior Art History major and works at the Cunningham Center at SCMA.

Vija Celmins: Always on the Surface

This work is one of Celmins’ earliest attempts at printmaking and has been called “one of the finest and scarcest American prints of the 1970s.”

close up view of ocean waves in black and white

Curiouser and Curiouser

The poster features contrasting neon colors layered over one another and photographs of iconic Alice in Wonderland imagery. One does not need any drugs to feel the full effect of his hallucinogenic style.

pink, white, blue and purple, large checked floor receding into a doorway, with scattered playing cards, mushroom in lower left, bottle in lower right with DRINK ME on label, chessman at mid left and another bottle with DRINK ME on its label, white rabbit in center sitting up with pink eye, the wall around the doorway is made up of camouflage squiggles in pink and blue with KEEP YOUR HEAD in purple appearing through the pattern

Thomas Cornell's French Revolutionary Portraits

The SCMA’s Cunningham Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs has in its collection a set of etchings that artist Thomas Cornell completed for the Northampton-based Gehenna Press, run by Leonard Baskin, in 1964.

Bust portrait of man with short hair, looking to his left

Degas Doppelgängers: SCMA Lithographs From Same Series as Gardner Heist Drawings

With the recent efforts of the FBI to again publicize the crime and recover the works, we thought we’d highlight the parallel works in our collection in solidarity with the Gardner.

drawings of ballerina's feet and man playing a cello, with French advertisement for a show in the bottom left corner

Munio Makuuchi

Like all of Makuuchi’s visual works, "On Boy’s Day" relates directly to his life history.

landscape with sun at upper left, large arch of water with two salmon at lower left and three at right, top one arching back toward top center image

Smith Tours: Diego Rivera and the Value of Art

Designing and giving a tour at the Smith College Museum of Art (SCMA) is both exciting and unpredictable.

woman and child in yellow outfits, child with hat, walking in woods in front of a stand of brown trees

Daumier's Bathers

Daumier produced a series entitled Les Baigneurs, which provides humorous commentary on bourgeois bathers in the nineteenth-century.

two women in a bathhouse holding glasses; public pool on the right

From our archives: The Age of Mezzotint

Mezzotint, a printmaking technique invented by the German amateur artist Lugwig von Siegen in 1642, created unprecedented capabilities for translating paintings into prints.

half-length portrait of a young woman with long curly hair, wearing a large lace collar, dark dress, a bow around her neck and a feather in her hair

Student Picks: From Tissot to Toulouse-Lautrec - Fashion Focus in 19th-century French Art

From Degas’ depiction of dancers, to Mary Cassatt’s rendition of social life and mother-daughter bonds, to Toulouse-Lautrec’s images of prostitutes at the Moulin Rouge, they all allow us to muse over the garments worn at the time by every kind of person in the social spectrum.