Design and Art Australia Online

Biographical details beyond her professional years are few for the individual always identified in contemporary reports as “Mrs Edith Smart”, nor is it apparent who was Mr Smart of whom, it is assumed, she was his widow. She was a curator and manager of exhibitions active from around 1925 until after the Second World War. Her tastes were catholic and extended to craftwork, the conservative painting of the Australian Academy of Art, and encompassed the moderns and photography.

She established Pandora gallery in the Edwards Building, at 178 Collins Street, Melbourne, two doors from the Athenaeum Theatre, prior to 1925 when she is first reported holding an exhibition of pottery, china, and brasses from 19-26 May; and craft by Amy Fuller in July; bellows, cabinets, flower bowls, smokers’ stands, lamp shades, card boxes etc. From 1926 she also managed the adjacent Arts and Literature Society’s room on the same floor for “small exhibitions of pictures and craft work” with work by A. Romayne Walker, May Vale Gilfillan and Joan Cobb shown in November.

Trained as a musician, her interest in art was evident in her association with the Victorian Artists’ Society, whose opening of its annual autumn exhibition she attended in May 1926 and its Conversazione on 3 May, and at a recital by Percy Grainger at the Lyceum Club 11 June, and the opening of the new rooms of the Arts and Crafts Society at 323 Bourke Street, 2 July 1926. On 8 Dec 1926, she was one of a party at a welcome-home luncheon for Jessie Traill, returned from travelling abroad for two years, at the Lyceum Club with Dora Wilson, Norah Gurdon, Winnie Gurdon, S. Zumstein, Margaret McLean, Pegg Clarke, Polly Hurry, Elsie Traill, Elma Roach, and Sybil Joske.

From 1-11 December 1926 she became involved at the neighbouring Athenaeum Gallery in which she was appointed to manage the Women’s Art Club 17th Annual Exhibition, and thereafter was frequently curator of shows and art events there, sufficiently in the public eye to have her holiday in Cowes and the Australian Alps at the end of that year reported in The Herald.

Smart managed shows in other spaces too, for example a Christmas exhibition of raffia by Elsie Wilson and Joan Cobb in the Needlework Studio 3rd floor, Clyde House, 182 Collins street, 1-10 December.

The annual show of the Twenty Melbourne Painters (founded 1919) on 18 September 1928, to which associate member W. B. Mclnnes invited guest exhibitors Rupert Bunny, Bernard Hall, John Farmer, Colin Colahan and Archie Colquhoun was a major undertaking at at the Athenaeum Gallery by A. M. Ball as hon. secretary of the T.M.P., and Smart, who managed the exhibition.

Her arrangement of a Clara Southern show in the Austral Buildings, 117 Collins Street was reviewed by Blamire Young On 30 Jun 1930 she had Melbourne University Ormond professor Bernard Heinze open a collection of paintings in the Little Gallery, 172 Little Collins St., and in the same gallery in July managed the first showing of “The Embryos;” J.E. Flett, Raymond Lindsay, Constance Parkin, Herbert McClintock, Sheila Hawkins, Nutter Buzacott, Margaret Crombie, Harry E Hudson, Dominic Leon, Eric Thake, M. Wallis, William E. Dolphin.

Through 1931 to 1934 she arranged shows at The Athenaeum Gallery including the thirteenth annual exhibition of the twenty Melbourne painters, the Australian Art Association exhibition, and members and invitees of the Contemporary Art Group attended by Daryl Lindsay, Isabel May Tweddle, Ada May Plante, Bernard Hall’s family, Alan Henderson, architect Bob Hamilton, Robert Croll, the Felix Meyers, Arnold Shore and George Bell. Meanwhile over 1-11 Oct 1931 she organised the annual exhibition of the Victorian Artists’ Society at their headquarters in East Melbourne; the third annual Warrandyte exhibition of paintings at the Penleigh Boyd studio in December 1932; was his agent for photographer John Kauffmann’s one-person show at the Newman Galleries, Melbourne in 1935; and managed Hogan Galleries, Elizabeth House also in 1935.

With A. M. E. Bale, Smart arranged “lectures(lectures)”:http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-2976929381 in the Athenaeum by Arnold Shore on “Talking about Art,” and John Rowell responding to the question “Why should we interest ourselves in art?” Further exhibitions there, during 1940, were by W. A. Dargie, P. G. Moore, R., M. Warner, Percy Watson Colvin Smith, Max Ragless; and the 31st annual’ exhibition of the Melbourne Society of Woman Painters; and Victorian Salon of Photography, and she was A.M.E. Bale’s agent for an exhibition of her paintings at Velasquez Gallery. Then in 1941 she supervised the fourth annual exhibition of the Australian Academy of Art with W R Sedon ; and the New Melbourne Art Club http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article205178575. The fifth and sixth shows at of the Australian Academy of Art followed in 1943 and 1944.

She continued at the Athenaeum until at least 1946, arranging the final show of the Australian Academy of Art before its demise in 1945; a show of Dora Wilson’s Melbourne cityscapes; and paintings by indigenous artist-cum-athlete Edwin Pareroultja attended by the Duchess of Gloucester and Rex Battarbee.

In 1944 Smart was profiled in The Age which described her beginnings at Pandora gallery ”when she handled a number of pictures. This grew. and by degrees she had so many exhibitions to manage that she eventually devoted all her time to it. Strangely enough. it is music which is her special form of art, though she is interested in art in all its aspects.”

Writers:

James McArdle

Date written:

2023

Last updated:

2023