Saint Mary's College Museum of Art

The Saint Mary's College Museum of Art is where William Keith, California's most famous landscape painter, meets Andy Warhol and where the two of them meet Don Quixote and Toulouse-Lautrec.

The Saint Mary's College Museum of Art will be closed for installation ; reopening February 12, 2012

Masks and Costumes: Ethnographic Art from the Permanent Collection
Reflections in Time: Photographs by Stanley Truman from the Permanent Collection

SMC Student Art Exhibition coming soon! April 15- May 19.

Learn more about our upcoming exhibits »

Opening February 12, 2012
The Veil: Visible and Invisible Spaces

The documentary exhibition is a visual response to the themes and issues presented in Heath’s new edited volume, The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore, and Politics, University of California Press.

Works by thirty contemporary international women artists are divided into three categories: The Sacred Veil, The Sensuous Veil, and The Sociopolitical Veil. The broad range of media includes paintings, sculpture, video, textiles, installations, photography, tableaus and new media.

Accompanying the exhibition is a book form of the artists’ portfolios, Re-Interpreting the Middle East: Beyond Historical Stereotypes, curated by May Hariri Aboutaam. An interactive piece, “What Does the Veil Mean to Me,” invites viewers to write responses to the exhibition on silk headscarves displayed on laundry lines.

Jennifer Heath is an independent scholar, award-winning cultural journalist, critic, curator, and activist. Her work focuses primarily on social and environmental justice. She is the author/editor of nine books of fiction and non-fiction, including, The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore, and Politics, and, most recently, Land of the Unconquerable: The Lives of Contemporary Afghan Women, co-edited with Ashraf Zahedi.

Heath will give a slide presentation on opening day, Sunday, February 12, at 2 p.m, in the Soda Activity Center, "(Dis)Covering the Veil: History, Lore, and Politics." Several of the artists are expected to be present.

The opening day program and campus events are co-sponsored by The College Committee on Inclusive Excellence, the History Department, the Women's and Gender Studies Program, the Communications Department, the Ethnic Studies Program, the Sociology Department, the Anthropology Department, and the Politics Department. Faculty adviser to the exhibition is professor of History, Myrna Santiago, Ph.D.

Exhibition Image above: Anita Kunz, Girls Will Be Girls, 2006, pigment print, 16 x 20 inches