Smith College Museum of Art
Smith College Museum of Art
|
|
| Established | 1870 |
|---|---|
| Location | 20 Elm Street, Northampton, Massachusetts |
| Type | Art museum |
| Accreditation | American Alliance of Museums |
| Director | Jessica Nicol |
| Owner | Smith College |
| Website | www |
The Smith College Museum of Art (abbreviated SCMA), connected with the well-known Smith College, is a prominent art museum in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is considered to be one of the most impressive college museums in the country. The museum is best known for its remarkable compilation of American and European art of the 19th and 20th centuries, including superb works by Edgar Degas, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Georges Seurat, Albert Bierstadt, John Singer Sargent and others. First established in 1879, the collection has expanded to include nearly 25,000 works of art, including a diverse collection of non-Western art. It is also a member of the Museums10 collective, a consortium of art, science, and history museums in Western Massachusetts. The SCMA serves as an important cultural and educational resource for the communities of Smith College, the Five College Consortium, and the town of Northampton.
The Brown Fine Arts Center, which opened in 2003 after a two-year, $35 million building renovation, now houses the art library, Art Department, and the Smith College Museum of Art. Designed by the New York City-based Polshek Partnership Architects (now known as Ennead Architects, the 164,000-gross-square-foot (15,236m²) building metaphorically and physically links the college with its neighboring community.
The SCMA has an extensive collection including paintings, sculptures, works on paper (prints, drawings, photographs and books), antiquities, decorative arts, and Asian, African and Islamic art. The museum contains four floors of galleries that house the permanent collection, the Cunningham Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings and Photographs, and rotating exhibitions. The center houses more than 1,600 drawings, over 5,700 photographs spanning the history of the museum, and an extensive collection of more than 8,000 prints by artists from Albrecht Dürer to contemporary printmakers. In addition, the museum also features two bathrooms designed by artists Ellen Driscoll and Sandy Skoglund to represent functional art.
...
Wikipedia