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.

head and shoulders portrait of a man with grey hair wearing a white tank top; another face oriented sideways is visible on his proper left shoulder

The Faces We Wear

February 21, 2023

Meredith Diamond '23 is a Computer Science major and East Asian Studies minor. She has been working for the Cunningham Center for two years now.

Chinese Jades in the Newly Reinstalled Ancient World Gallery

Yao Wu writes about a project last year, before the pandemic hit, of reinstalling the museum’s Ancient World gallery to provide a more global perspective.

greenish translucent "Guei", bottle horns, deeply cut out detail motifs

A Pair of Paintings in SCMA Then\Now\Next

One of my favorite pairings from 'SCMA Then\Now\Next' is separated by nearly five centuries: a Cubist painting by Picasso and a small Renaissance panel painting.

With his left hand, a man holds the head of one man kneeling, bound man; with his right hand he holds a sword above the head of another, who appears to hold his arm still; other figures watch from behind rows of pink pillars; red and white tiled floor and black arched doorway on the back wall

Jo Ortel ’83 on the Work of Truman Lowe

"I have to say, I have very little time anymore for art that hangs politely in museums. I really think that there has to be some connection with the current issues, and the environment seems, to me, to be among the most important."

freestanding sculpture; blue painted wood base, two sticks rising up out of the base, smaller colorful sticks balanced on top of those two sticks

About That Narrative: Hương Ngô

As the only audiovisual piece in my series on artworks addressing memory, the video poses a compelling question: how do speaking and listening contribute to our recollections of the past?

three side-by-side screens appear with two sisters in black shirts, the artist on the right, her sister on the left, with the artist's young niece in a white shirt in the center, wearing white headphones against a light background; all three have long dark hair

From the archives: Never Exhausted

From the archives: Cunningham Center Brown Post-Baccalaureate Curatorial Fellow Maggie Kurkoski '12 on master wood engraver Paul Landacre.

Nude woman with long hair holding onto mane of a rearing black horse, dark clouds in sky, dark spiky grass below horse.

From the archives: Vanguards of Ukiyo-e: The Women of Modern Japanese Printmaking

This historic 'SCMA Insider' post from 2018 is about trailblazers: coming of age during World War II, Iwami Reika and Naoko Matsubara were two of the first women ukiyo-e woodblock printmakers in Japan.

Sheets of paper and hats swept up in the wind as travelers struggle with the wind under bare trees. Silhouette of Mt Fuji in distance.

From the archives: T. Frantisek Simon

We hope you enjoy this historic post from 2015 by Maggie Hoot '16 about the prolific, intriguing, but little-known Czech printmaker T. Frantisek Simon.

a street lined with stores on both the left and right; horse-drawn carriages and carts in the middle of the street

About That Narrative: Joanne Leonard

Leonard’s interest in questioning photographic “truths” might serve as a way to tell a more accurate version of her family’s story by fracturing the materials at hand.

images of women and children interspersed with handwritten text in white, images of red scissors, and handwritten and typescript diary notes

Expanding the View

'South Pass Wind River Mountains, Wyoming' came into SCMA's collection nearly 70 years ago, and our view keeps changing.

Desert mountain landscape; foreground of browns; midground of oranges, golds, and yellows; mountain horizon of golds, yellows, and blues. The sky is nearly cloudless.Groups of people – the size of ants – can be found in the valleys and mountainsides of the landscape.

About That Narrative: Jess Dugan and Vanessa Fabbre

For over five years, photographer Jess T. Dugan and social worker Vanessa Fabbre traveled around the United States photographing and interviewing older members of the transgender community.

dark-haired individual in a leopard print dress seated on a motorcycle with their arms around a blond individual dressed in black

From Home: An Interview with Lucy Xiaochuan Liu '21

"I think that sometimes the value of grief and suffering are that they capture a moment, and, by capturing it, create a sense of existence."

Photograph shows a young women looking upside down at camera. Her legs and feet are up against a wall. She is lying next to an older woman who is sitting straight up in the large upholstered chair covered in patterned textiles. They are holding each others arms.

Asian Ceramics in American Paintings

Ceramic is a type of material that has been extensively traded and imitated around the globe.

A Cup of Tea. 1883 by American artist Charles Sprague Pearce, 1851–1914.