25 EXCAVATING THE IMAGE IS A COLLABORATION between the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute and SCMA. During each offering of this program, an artwork in the Smith collection is the centerpiece for a cross-disciplinary dialogue among faculty from a range of departments and experts across various fields. In January 2017, this two-day colloquium focused on a fresco by the Mexican artist Diego Rivera (1886–1957) called Market Scene (1930). This composition comes from a larger mural series Rivera painted on the walls of the Palace of Cortés at Cuernavaca, a project recognized as a metaphoric reclaiming of this center of colonialism for the Mexican people. The fragment in Smith’s collection is embedded with layers of political and historical meaning. As an object, it is also intertwined with Smith College’s history—the painting was given to the museum by Elizabeth Morrow, the wife of Dwight W. Morrow (U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 1927–1930). She graduated from Smith in 1896, and served as the college’s acting president from 1939–1940. As ambas- sador, her husband commissioned the larger mural at Cuernavaca in 1929. An interdisciplinary group of 14 Five College faculty members came together to consider this image through the lens of Rivera’s own artistic motivations and political leanings, as well as the ambassador’s aspirations for Mexican-American relations. Participants engaged with the work of art through open discussion, presentations by faculty colleagues, an exploration of related objects in the Mead Art Museum’s collection (Amherst College), and a hands-on introduction to fresco making by Valentine Talland, senior objects conservator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. ABOVE: Smith faculty and museum staff studying the museum’s Rufino Tamayo mural (installed in the Brown Fine Arts Center atrium) during the Excavating the Image study session ACADEMIC ENGAGEMENT EXCAVATING THE IMAGE: MARKET SCENE BY DIEGO RIVERA