Emily Smith is the Curatorial Fellow in Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. She received her MA in art history from the University of Virginia in 2002. Smith assisted co-curators John B. Ravenal and Matthew Affron on the exhibition Matisse, Picasso, and Modern Art in Paris, and she co-curated Labor and Leisure: Works by African American Artists in the VMFA Permanent Collections. Before taking her position at the VMFA, Smith was Director of Exhibitions at Piedmont Arts in Martinsville, Virginia, and the Assistant Director at Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her exhibitions include Hush Lush: Craft Materials in Contemporary Art (co-curated with Sonya Clark); Virginia Painters: Philip Geiger and Robert Stuart; and Ted Turner: A Retrospective. She was an adjunct faculty member in the art history department at Patrick Henry Community College, Martinsville, and has published art criticism in C-ville Weekly.