Established | 1870 |
---|---|
Location | 20 Elm Street Northampton, Massachusetts |
Coordinates | 42°19′07″N72°38′11″W / 42.3185°N 72.6364°W |
Type | Art museum |
Accreditation | American Alliance of Museums |
Director | Jessica Nicoll |
Architect | Polshek Partnership Architects |
Owner | Smith College |
Website | Official website |
The Smith College Museum of Art, abbreviated SCMA, is the art museum of Smith College, located in Northampton, Massachusetts. First established in 1870, the museum is part of the American Alliance of Museums, Five College Consortium, and Museums10 consortiums. [1]
Throughout the years, the museum collection has expanded to include nearly 25,000 works of art, including a diverse collection of non-Western art. [2] The institution is widely known for its collection of American and European art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including works by Albert Bierstadt, Paul Cézanne, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, John Singer Sargent, Georges Seurat, and representation of many other notable artists.
The Smith College Museum of Art was first established in 1870, and has been led by many notable directors over the years, including Jere Abbott, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Charles Percy Parkhurst, and Jessica Nicoll.
The Brown Fine Arts Center opened in 2003 after a two-year, $35 million building renovation, and now houses the art library, Art Department, as well as the Smith College Museum of Art. Designed by the New York-based Polshek Partnership Architects, the 164,000-gross-square-foot (15,236m2) building was created to link the college with its neighboring community. [3]
Housed in the Brown Center, the Art Department of Smith College offers art history degrees, first initiated by President Laurenus Clark Seelye in the 1870s, has evolved to become one of the most respected programs in American undergraduate education. Notable faculty members have included Harriet Boyd Hawes, Oliver Larkin, Charles Rufus Morey, Phyllis Williams Lehmann, and Edgar Wind. At the tenth Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art, which took place in Rome in 1912, Smith was one of the only sixty-eight American institutions of higher learning with a professorship in art history. [4] The museum is often utilized as a learning space for students, especially those who enroll in art-related courses.
The Smith College Museum of Art has an extensive collection, which includes paintings, sculptures, works on paper, antiquities, decorative arts from diverse cultures around the world. [5] The museum has four floors of galleries that house the permanent collection, as well as the Cunningham Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings and Photographs. [6] The center houses more than 1,600 drawings and over 5,700 photographs spanning the history of the museum, and an extensive collection of more than 8,000 prints by old masters to contemporary printmakers. In addition, the museum also features two bathrooms designed by artists Ellen Driscoll and Sandy Skoglund to represent functional art. [7]
Reflective of diverse student body of the college and campaigns to raise awareness of underrepresented groups of women, the museum has been actively procuring artworks by female artists and female artists of color. Notable figures represented include Carmen Lomas Garza, Susan Rothenberg, Betye Saar, and Marja Vallila. [8]
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1805 and is the first and oldest art museum and art school in the United States.
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Lowery Stokes Sims is an American art historian and curator of modern and contemporary art known for her expertise in the work of African, African American, Latinx, Native and Asian American artists such as Wifredo Lam, Fritz Scholder, Romare Bearden, Joyce J. Scott and others. She served on the curatorial staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Museum of Arts and Design. She has frequently served as a guest curator, lectured internationally and published extensively, and has received many public appointments. Sims was featured in the 2010 documentary film !Women Art Revolution.
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The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) is a college-affiliated art museum in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It is located on the Williams College campus, close to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and the Clark Art Institute. Its growing collection encompasses more than 14,000 works, with particular strengths in contemporary art, photography, prints, and Indian painting. The museum is free and open to the public.
Roger Brown was an American artist and painter. Often associated with the Chicago Imagist groups, he was internationally known for his distinctive painting style and shrewd social commentaries on politics, religion, and art.
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Charles Percy Parkhurst was an American museum curator best known for his work on the Roberts Commission, tracking down art looted during World War II.
Jere Abbott was an American art historian and museum director. Abbott was the founding associate director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City from 1929 to 1932, and director of the Smith College Museum of Art from 1932 to 1946.
The Colby College Museum of Art is an art museum on the campus of Colby College in Waterville, Maine. Founded in 1959 and now comprising five wings, nearly 8,000 works and more than 38,000 square feet of exhibition space, the Colby College Museum of Art has built a collection that specializes in American and contemporary art with additional, select collections of Chinese antiquities and European paintings and works on paper. The museum serves as a teaching resource for Colby College and is a major cultural destination for the residents of Maine and visitors to the state.
Zillman Art Museum-University of Maine (ZAM) is an art museum in downtown Bangor, Maine. It is part of the University of Maine, which is located in nearby Orono, Maine. The University of Maine Art Collection was established in 1946, under the leadership of Vincent Hartgen. As the initial faculty member of the Department of Art and curator of the art collection, Hartgen's goal was to provide the people of Maine with significant opportunities to experience and learn about the visual arts and their diverse histories and cultural meanings.
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