36 THE HILLYER SOCIETY/EMILY HALL TREMAINE SYMPOSIUM THE HILLYER SOCIETY IS NAMED FOR WINTHROP HILLYER, THE FIRST BENEFACTOR OF THE MUSEUM, WHOSE GIFTS IN THE 1880s FUNDED ACQUISITIONS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF NEW GALLERIES FOR THE GROWING COLLECTION. When Janice Carlson Oresman ’55 first arrived at Smith College, art was not on her radar. She took a chance by enrolling in an art history class (Art 11) and, as a scholar- ship student, worked at the Smith College Museum of Art’s reception desk. The combination had a powerful effect. The art class was like a marriage in a funny kind of way. It hit me over the head and from that moment on art has been, aside from my family, the focus of my life. Over several decades, Oresman, an avid collector and art adviser for companies around the world, has donated more than 100 pieces of art—primarily prints—to the museum’s Cunningham Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings and Photographs. Recently, she formalized plans to bequeath additional works to the museum. SCMA, she says, has been a focus of her philanthropy for a simple reason. It was Smith that awakened in her a lifelong passion for art. Oresman bought her first print—Ben Shahn’s The Phoenix—primarily because she wrote her art history thesis about his work, and she had the pleasure of meeting Shahn while at Smith. Her collection of prints bloomed from there. I bought Shahn’s print because prints were affordable. None of us had much money. Then I got really inter- ested in the print process. I’m much more interested in works on paper than I am in paintings. Oil paintings can be very static. Works on paper are quick and immediate and sensitive. Now, Oresman’s still-growing collection takes up nearly every bit of wall space in her Manhattan home. “One of the reasons I’ve given so much to Smith is that I have more art than I can hang up,” she says. “I don’t think art should hide in the closet.” Oresman—who sits on SCMA’s Visiting Committee and the Asian Art Task Force, was a member of Smith’s board of trustees from 1992–2002 and was awarded the John M. Greene Award in 2007—wants to see her collection put to good use. She knows that because education is at the heart of the museum’s mission, Smith students will learn from and interact with the pieces she donates, which include an Arthur G. Dove watercolor and a William Kentridge print. Early estate planning has made donating to SCMA easy for Oresman. Now, her collection has a forever home, and she’s supporting the college that first supported her. I chose the Smith Museum of Art because that’s my museum. And I was on a full scholarship at Smith. I couldn’t have made it without their help. I’m very grateful for all that I got there, which is why I’ve made this bequest. THE HILLYER SOCIETY/DONOR PROFILE JANICE CARLSON ORESMAN ‘55