As classes begin and another school year is under way, I wish to update you on some exciting news about our students and our facilities.

Teresa Pierce, Enchanted Forest, 2007. Digital photo.

We are delighted to announce new awards and recognition earned by several SMFA students early in the academic year. Just this week we were notified that Teresa Pierce and Christopher Dombeck won prestigious Stephen D. Paine Scholarships. The Paine awards provide financial support for Boston-area students in their final year of art school. Last week, the 2008-09 Springborn Fellows were selected by an outside jury. The Springborn Fellows program, the gift of alumna Carolyn Springborn and her husband, Bob, offers a total of $50,000 in annual scholarship funding for advanced students with a demonstrated commitment to their art studies.  We congratulate the Springborn Fellows in this inaugural year of the program: Cobi Moules (MFA program) and BFAs Andrew Edman, Erin Donnelly, Mindy Rinkenberger, and Nabila Santa-Cristo. Additionally, two students in our combined degree program with Tufts, Helen Miller and Liza Voll, are highlighted in an article on the homepage of the Tufts Web site, detailing their community work over the summer. Earlier this summer, Erica Lisette Murphy was honored by the Princess Grace Foundation-USA with a 2008-09 Princess Grace Honorarium in Film. We congratulate all of these exceptional students on their good work and well-deserved recognition.

All-school lunch in updated Weems Center. Photo: Jess Camacho

With the generous support of Governors, Katherine R. Kirk, current Chair, and Sandra O. Moose, past Chair, and their husbands, Malcolm Gefter and Eric Birch, we have a splendid new look to our Weems Center. The Weems Center is a multi-purpose community space for the entire Museum School and, as such, a place for gathering, eating, buying art supplies, working on laptops, and exhibiting work. The redesign, executed last August, transformed this space into a more functional, coherent, and attractive area for communal use, with defined spaces for the specialized functions of the café, store, gallery, and projects. The new design also takes advantage of the gardens and exterior courtyard, provides additional exhibiting walls, new seating and workspace for computer and internet access, and accessible displays for the store. We are grateful to Kathy and Sandy for the enormous facelift they have given our atrium.

I hope you will be an active part of the SMFA community this year and invite you to begin doing so by visiting our fall invitational exhibition, "Shifting Perspectives: Esteban Pastorino Díaz" on view in the Grossman Gallery through October 13. With more than 70 recent photographs, the exhibition presents the largest one-person exhibition of the Argentine artist’s work to date and presents a fascinating perspective on our world. I look forward to seeing you at the SMFA this fall.

  

With warm regards,   Deborah H. Dluhy Dean of the School Deputy Director, MFA