About the Photos

Smith College's renowned Museum of Art, art library and art department share a home in the Brown Fine Arts Center. Designed by Polshek Partnership Architects, the art library and department opened in 2002; the Museum of Art opened in 2003.

Features of the Brown Fine Arts Center include a cutting-edge digital imaging center, spacious galleries, a print studio and a 109-seat auditorium. Honors students have private studio spaces with an adjoining common room for collaboration.

An enclosed, sky-lit atrium unites the library, museum, and art department and serves as a year-round gathering space. The atrium features Rufino Tamayo's 43-foot long mural, Nature and the Artist: The Work of Art and the Observer, commissioned by Smith in 1943.

The Museum of Art's holdings include nearly 25,000 objects, with particular strength in 19th- and early 20th-century European and American art. Among them is Claude Monet's The Seine at Bougival, Evening, from 1869. (Smith College Museum of Art; purchased 1946.)

Exhibition spaces in Hillyer Hall, home of the art department, include the Jannotta Gallery, for student displays, and the Oresman Gallery, a dedicated visiting artist gallery.

Hillyer Hall includes painting, sculpture, drawing and graphic art studios, and a photography studio with a color darkroom. The sculpture studio includes a bronze casting facility, and the print studio features a motorized, flatbed offset press.

Smith was the first educational institution to adopt Luna's Insight visual database. The system provide access to high-resolution images of works from the Museum of Art as well as items from the art department's study collections.

Hillyer Hall provides a 20-seat seminar room with a custom-made table providing laptop connections for classes, and two computer design studio/classroom spaces that feature graphically-enhanced workstations for the sharing and viewing of digital images.