b'BLACK REFRACTIONS: PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTSAMONG MANY EXTRAORDINARY PROGRAMSwith a delicious lunch after a performance by the related to Black Refractions, SCMAs partnership withSmith College Campus School Chorus. LaunchingProject Coach in 2019-2020 stands out as a powerfulthe opening of the exhibition with a well-attended example of socially responsible ways in which we workpartnership-driven program like Community Dayto connect people to art, ideas and each other. Projectstarted the run of Black Refractions on a positiveCoach teams Smith College faculty and students note, bringing in audiences who returned to thewith teens from nearby Springfield, Massachusetts,museum for additional programs in the following to mentor, or coach, them in how to be leaders inweeks and months.their community. We plugged into what they call thisVia remote conversations in the spring, Project cascading mentorship model to work at the museumCoach youth shared all the ways in which the overall with nearly 30 teens in fall 2019 and winter 2020. experience inspired and changed them: developing We offered a series of weekly workshops andcomfort in an unfamiliar museum space; applying weekend practice sessions in the galleries of the new skills related to keen observation and critical museum, facilitated by Student Museum Educatorsthinking to their academic work; and, importantly, the who worked with teens in small groups under theopportunity to see themselves reflected in the works guidance of local Visual Thinking Strategies expertof art and in our Student Museum Educators. The Sara Lasser Yau and Gina Hall, educator for school experience inspired and changed SCMA staff as well: and family programs. On Free Community Day onraising conversations about inclusion, access and race January 18, 2020, Project Coach youth took the leadin the museum and helping us to confront our own by engaging visitors in dialogue about works of unconscious biases. Seeing Project Coach participants art in Black Refractions and infusing the museum withfully embrace their roles as leaders in gallery conver-energy, confidence and new expertise. sations, and the effect that had on one and all, under-Community Day programming also featuredscores our goal of creating a sense of belonging and hands-on artmaking by a Boston-based social justiceshared ownership for all who set foot in the museum. organization called Wee The People, founded by As one Project Coach teen astutely noted,two Black mothers, who led museum visitors of allI never thought about art as telling a story. I loveages in creating identity crowns. Veganish Foodies,making a story from the art and its a better storyconnecting people to artanother Black-owned business, delighted visitors when you make it together. right, top, clockwise:Visitors at Second Friday in Black Refractions, Students at Night at Your Museum 2020; Art in Focus led by Daphne Lamothe,professor of Africana Studies, Smith College; Members First Look led by exhibition curator Connie Choi, The Studio Museum; Visitors at Second Friday; Student from Project Coach discussing a work of art in Black Refractions32'