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.
David Becker Day 2012
December 11 is David Becker Day, presenting the perfect occasion to interact deeply with a work of art and particularly a work of art that speaks deeply to your personal values or beliefs.
French and Italian Drawings: Renaissance through Romanticism, Part I
Six students who enrolled in the colloquium, French and Italian Drawings: Renaissance through Romanticism, developed an installation of French and Italian Drawings from the SCMA collection. Students wrote their own wall labels for the installation, a selection of which are shown below.
Cass Bird: I Look Just Like My...
Cass Bird '99 works as both a fine art and commercial photographer in Brooklyn, NY. While her magazine work sensuously portrays celebrities, models, and pop culture icons, her photographs of friends, acquaintances, and inspirational figures are far more personal, challenging, and moving.
Student Picks: Between the Lines – Image and Prose in the 20th Century Avant-Garde
By combining each artwork with poems, prose, and quotes from authors from the same period, 'Between the Lines' gives the viewer a new perspective on the influential and interpretive relationship between 20th century art and literature.
Monsters
We all have a relationship to the monsters we create in our subconscious or the ones we find in newspaper headlines.
Romare Bearden: Brilliant Ambiguity
Bearden’s "Untitled" watercolor drawing, which entered our collection this year, was produced during a transitional moment in the artist’s career.
W. Eugene Smith’s “Spanish Wake”
Smith passionately committed himself to capturing intimate scenes that revealed the essence of his subjects and hoped that his images would help to stir the emotions and conscience of his viewer.
Maximón Militar
The enigmatic Maximón, with his taste for alcohol and tobacco, is an unorthodox figure among Guatemalan congregations.
Announcing the 2012-2013 Student Picks Winners!
Congratulations to this year’s Student Picks curators!
From 'Canyon' to 'Crackerjack': What You See is What You Don’t
Both Rauschenberg's 'Canyon,' the subject of recent public controversy, and 'Crackerjacks,' a 1977 graduate photography portfolio from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in SCMA's permanent collection, position contemporary art as an invitation to interpret.
Tara Donovan
There is an unmistakable magic in Tara Donovan’s work. 'Untitled' is a fairly early experimental two-dimensional work in which Donovan used soap bubbles as drawing tool creating a unique image that captured an ephemeral occurrence.
Whistler's Venice Set
Featuring 20 prints and photographs from the permanent collection, this summer's corridor exhibition 'Image and After-Image' looks at James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s etchings and drypoints alongside the development of photography in the second half of the nineteenth century.
