About the Event
Date
Sep 17, 6 – 8pmLocation
SMFA at Tufts (230 Fenway)
Join Tufts University Art Galleries in collaboration with the SMFA Office of Development and Alumni Engagement for a reception celebrating the exhibition SMFA at 150: Looking Back, on view July 18–November 8, 2026.
We’ll ring in a century and a half of boundary-pushing arts education in Boston with a community-wide celebration, activating the 230 Fenway campus with food trucks, music, and pop-up tours of the exhibition.
Curated by a cohort of collaborators and advisors, SMFA at 150: Looking Back takes an episodic approach to the art school’s past—focusing on rumor and lore as the powerful tools in crafting a community. In doing so, we offer a polyvocal and admittedly incomplete snapshot of a century and half of artmaking and education in Boston—told through the archives, first-person narratives, and a collage of fragmented memories to create an authentic portrait of a properly messy and wonderfully creative institution.
SMFA at 150: Looking Back is organized by TUAG Director Dina Deitsch with Avram Finkelstein (BFA’73), Dell Marie Hamilton (MFA’12), Shellburne Thurber (BFA’75), former faculty Bill Burke and Jim Dow, SMFA Librarian Darin Murphy, and TUAG Exhibitions Coordinator Meera Chauhan, TUAG Graduate Fellow Kendall Murphy (MA’26), and TUAG intern Sophia Chen (BA’28). Exhibition support and materials are generously provided by the Tufts University Art Galleries Permanent Collection, Tufts Archival Research Center (TARC), and private lenders.
Image: SMFA Cheerleaders Photo Album, 1997. UA133.007.045. Tufts Archival Research Center (TARC). Medford, MA.
