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.

Charcoal drawing on cream paper of a woman with bobbed dark hair sitting cross-legged in a chair. She wears a button-up shirt, tie, knee-length skirt, and heeled boots with tiny buttons up the side.

Art as Archive: Curating Germany, 1918-1945

Rebecca McClung is a Ph.D. student in the history department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Something wicked this way comes

With the approach of Halloween, and the days getting shorter and darker, I got inspired to investigate the story behind one of the more grotesque and interesting Italian prints in our collection.
two men run away into the woods

El Muro (The Wall)

Hernández Santos’s project strives to represent, in his words “the inner essence of a people who struggle to define and defend their right to be themselves, to have a space of their own.”
brick wall with indentation and applied text: 'LA MALDITA / CIRCUNSTANCIA DEL AGUA / POR TODAS PARTES".

Odd Couples: Venus vs. Eve

The correlation between Adam and Eve and Venus and Adonis is not as farfetched as it may seem at first glance.
Adam and Eve, side by side, heads turned toward each other; next to trees and animals

Student Picks: Who Is She, Really?

I decided to center my show on “questions”: questions the artists ask, questions I posed, and questions the viewer might ask.
black woman seated on bed wearing white dress and holding a cigarette, legs spread open, text between her legs: "Portrait of a woman who has / fallen from grace and into / the hands of evil."

A Double Take on Edward Hopper

Hopper's prints, like his paintings, are subtle vignettes of urban experience, rendered with psychological acuity and an eye to formal abstraction.
girl kneels in a bed, facing away from the viewer toward a window with blowing curtains

Introducing Student Picks

Our students help us see the collection fresh, through new eyes; they light on objects we rarely use or pair works we never would have thought of pairing.
room with tables with printed propped up on them; people stand looking at the prints
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