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Rachel Dantes-Palmer
April 25, 2024
Mary Alice Smith in the museum galleries.
First Siegel Folk Art Intern Reflects on Spring Semester
Not all great artists have formal training. That was just one of the many lessons that fourth-year UGA undergrad student Mary Alice Smith learned in her internship at the Georgia Museum of Art this semester. As the museum’s first Randy Siegel Folk Art Intern Smith has spent the semester poring over the museum’s permanent collection and learning about the self-taught and folk art field.
The internship is supported by artist and avid folk art collector Randy Siegel as a way to provide students with an opportunity to work with a museum curator in permanent collection research and discovery. Siegel has donated work to the museum’s permanent collection and has been an artist, supporter and collector of folk art for over 45 years. “Authenticity is one of the main reasons I’m attracted to folk art,” he said. “What separates many of these artists from the mainstream is that they aren’t afraid to expose their most authentic selves.”
During the course of the semester, Smith has focused on researching and identifying the self-taught and folk art works in the museum’s collection. “In identifying and classifying the work in the permanent collection, I [had] to orient myself with the history of self-taught art or how self-taught work has been conventionally presented in the art historical setting.”
Smith finds self-taught art and the like particularly intriguing, she said. Her passion for art drives the depth of her research. “I have an interest in understanding and defining what self-taught art means [for] today and how to acknowledge contemporary self-taught artists.”
During her research and consideration of the field this semester, she has had to consider the labels often assigned to this field of art and contemplate the big picture of self-taught and folk art. She had to ask herself: “What is considered self-taught art? What makes someone an outsider artist? What implications do the distinction or delineation of ‘self-taught art’ have on the interpretation of the artwork?”
Smith also led a tour of the museum’s collection of self-taught art this semester. Offering her expertise and interpretations of some of the more popular pieces from the museum’s permanent collection, she relished the opportunity to give visitors an in-depth and considerate analysis of some of the museum’s works by self-taught artists.
“Through my research, I [was] able to identify and spotlight the strengths of the collection, as well as locate where there is room for new acquisitions to the current collection of self-taught art,” she said. “In this way, this semester’s research has been double-sided–both identifying self taught art within the collection, as well as researching new and upcoming self-taught artists for potential future acquisitions.”
For Smith, being a curatorial intern for the Georgia Museum of Art has greatly enriched her body of expertise. She is currently completing the last semester of her degree as an art history major. After graduation in May, she plans to attend the University of Texas at Austin for a master of arts degree in art history.