In Feb., the Smith College Museum of Art (SCMA) — now free and open to the public — re-opened their newly renovated third floor after its closing the previous spring. Worlds in Process, the floor’s current installation, follows four themes, all of which feature art from a range of cultures, time periods and mediums.
In 2021, the SCMA was notified that the entire roof of the Brown Fine Arts Center was to be replaced. Staff took this news as an opportunity to reconsider the possibilities for their top floor.
“We realized that to replace the roof, we’d have to take everything off the floor,” said Aprile Gallant, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs and Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs. “We thought that that was an ideal time for us to think about what it would look like to reimagine this collection space.” All 190 works of art were removed from the floor last year.
The SCMA often relies on the public when making big changes. “We had gotten a lot of feedback that it was kind of an old-school approach to hanging a gallery,” said Gallant. The SCMA received 500 responses from a station implemented prior to the reconstruction, dedicated to surveying visitors. “We used that to start to think about how we might re-envision it,” she said. As the largest gallery in the building, the third floor displays most of the SCMA’s collection — as well as its more well-known works.
Justin Thomas, Visitor Experience Manager of the museum, spoke on the collaborative efforts that he and other contributors prioritized in the re-creation of the third floor.
“There are always collaborative practices happening in a museum,” said Thomas. “This one was a much more purposeful engagement with that.” Opportunities such as student listening sessions and evaluation from staff of all departments in the SCMA show a clear collaborative intention in their reworking of the floor.
The SCMA faced a relatively short time frame for renovation. However, they knew early on that they did not want to simply replace the works that had been there before.
“It was basically a very white installation,” said Gallant. The current installation has a much more thematic and diverse approach. “It’s the mix of materials and cultures…that’s one of the biggest changes,” she said. According to the SCMA, the third floor saw an increase from 32% to 54% of BIPOC artists and an increase from 11% to 33% of women artists. “Once we’re able to put in a wider range of things, it really helps us show a more diversity of our collection,” said Gallant.
“Worlds in Process: Art from the SCMA Collection” addresses the broader idea of humans, animals, and their interactions with the environment.
“We wanted to make sure that every section had things from different time periods, different materials, different artist positionalities,” said Gallant. Nature & Its Forms, Extractions, Transitions & Thresholds and Technologies are the four themes that, although have their respective categories, often see overlap with the art.
The SCMA also considered aspects outside of the art itself to increase the quality of visitors’ experiences. Gallant pointed out the interpretive labels on the third floor, which have seen some recent shifts.
“We made the fonts bigger; we color coded them so that people know where they are,” said Gallant. “There’s also a [distinct] shape, because people can’t always see colors the same way. So we’re trying to think about ways to make them more accessible to people.” The floor also features educational museum labels for art historical learning purposes.
Thomas, who has worked at the museum for almost six years, shared one of his favorite features of the third floor’s reinstallation.
“The thing that I personally like is having objects that, in some ways, wouldn’t have been seen next to or near one another,” said Thomas. Experimentation with art display at the SCMA works, in part, because one of the museum’s primary goals has always been to educate students. “A teaching museum…it affords that opportunity to do something like this,” he said.
On the third floor’s changes, Gallant remarked on the huge increase in space.
“One of the big pieces of feedback we got was that there were too many works and too many walls,” she said. “To be able to sit here and see the works of art all the way down there on the side, I just think that’s great.” Another benefit of this more flexible space allows curators to display sculptures and rotate works on paper more frequently.
The SCMA’s efforts for transparency are noticed in the introduction wall at the installation’s entrance. “There’s information about the museum and how we collect, what we collect, how we make those decisions,” said Gallant.
Staff at the SCMA emphasized the necessity of feedback for their work. “Any time that anyone can reach out to us and share their thoughts…it is so incredibly valuable to us in order to do things in a more thoughtful way,” said Thomas. “It’s just essential to what we do.”
Gallant echoed these sentiments.
“Understanding that not everyone feels comfortable in a museum, or that they belong…it’s our obligation to try to shift that if we can.”
The Smith College Museum of Art is free and open to all. Their hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 11:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
