This trip has been canceled.
Spend the day touring two significant local art Museums at Mt Holyoke and Smith College. Mt Holyoke Museum features the special exhibition Art of the 20th & 21st Centuries Reimagined. Leading up to the 150th anniversary in the fall of 2026, MHCAM staff are reimagining their permanent collection galleries with a fresh take on art from the 20th and 21st centuries. This installation features strengths of their permanent collection—primarily American and European art, with several works by international artists. Significant 20th-century developments such as photography, Surrealism, and abstraction reflect the changing viewpoints of a modern society, while more recent works shift between abstraction and figuration in a wide range of media. The installation also highlights how artists use non-art materials, deploying mass-produced and found objects to craft novel responses to living in the 21st century.
We’ll enjoy a group lunch at the Village Commons before heading to the Smith College Art Museum to view the special exhibit Painting the Persianate World. Showcasing manuscript illustrations, dye-painted textiles, and decorated ceramics, the exhibition draws primarily from the Smith College Museum of Art’s collection and includes select key works from other local institutions and is the first comprehensive project at SCMA to examine the Persianate world from a trans-media perspective. Painted books, wall hangings, and ceramic tiles played an important part in binding these regions together. These easily moveable and highly functional objects conveyed depictions of heroes, dragons, and cypress trees over long distances. They forged a shared visual sphere that exceeded geographical and political boundaries, and transported manners of comporting, dressing, eating, storytelling, as well as image-making.
Guide: Jeanne Fontaine,
Tuesday, February 13;
Depart: 10 am; return: 4 pm
Includes admissions, lunch, bus travel and driver tip.
Image courtesy of Mount Holyoke Museum of Art
