Then to Now: SMFA Alumni Across Five Decades

In dialogue with the anniversary exhibition SMFA at 150: Looking Back, on view through November 8, at Tufts University Art Galleries (TUAG) / Boston at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) at Tufts, Then to Now: SMFA Alumni Across Five Decades is a demonstration of the close relationship between TUAG and SMFA faculty, students, and alums. This exhibition features artworks from the last five decades produced by SMFA graduates and represents a fraction of works by SMFA artists acquired by Tufts University’s Permanent Collection.   

Exhibiting alumni artists include Jowhara AlSaud (MFA ’04), Susan Belton (DipHE ’79), Jedediah Caesar (BFA ’98), Kate Costello (BFA ’98), Allan Rohan Crite (DipHE ’36), Julia Csekö (MFA ’13), Dell Marie Hamilton (MFA ’12), Robert Hernandez (BA/BFA ’09), Ken Hruby (DipHE ’87/’88), Nicole Kita (MFA ’08), Joyce McDaniel (MFA ’82), Karen Moss (MFA ‘74), Evelyn Rydz (MFA ‘05), Beverly Semmes (BA/BFA ’82), Lois Tarlow (DipHE ’56), Nan Tull (DipHE ’78/’80), Heidi Whitman (DipHE ‘80), and Leslie Wilcox (BFA ’79). 

Then to Now is organized into four core thematic categories informed by art-historical pillars: Emotions in Black and White, Physical and Mental Layerings, Signs and Signals, and Materiality. The exhibition champions the idiosyncratic artistic and personal voices on the occasion of the SMFA’s sesquicentennial anniversary. 

In the first section, Emotions in Black and White, six artists unspool their experimentations in black and white, leveraging the monochromatic palette to poignant and sometimes surprising effect. The next two groupings—Physical and Mental Layerings and Signs and Signals—amplify methodologies for symbolic, visual, and ever-changing meaning-making. The last section grapples with questions about Materiality, including considerations of artistic medium, personal process, and final execution. 

Then to Now is organized by TUAG Graduate Exhibitions Intern Aiden Levy (MA, ’27) in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of the SMFA.

Image: Dell Marie Hamilton, Emulsions in Departure, 2010/2016.