Stephanie Mitchell Smith

Arts and Community Identity

Stephanie Mitchell Smith’s relationship with UNM has moved through nearly every season of a life: student, alumna, volunteer leader, and donor. She earned her bachelor’s degree in 1963 and her master’s in 1966, joining generations of her family who also attended the University. Her latest gift carries that long relationship into the creative lives of young people in Taos.

Valued at more than $2.3 million, the gift established the Stephanie Mitchell Smith Center for Creative Learning at the UNM Harwood Museum of Art. The center will give young people greater access to arts education and create space for exploration, mentorship, and discovery. Her nearby property, also included in the gift, contains residences that will support emerging artists and artists-in-residence.

The result will be more than a building or a program. A young person will be able to stand beside a working artist, watch an idea take shape, and begin testing a voice of their own. Emerging artists will have time and space to work within the creative traditions that have made Taos a meeting place for generations.

Stephanie’s gift reflects a career devoted to education, including service as a college dean and president, and years of leadership as a UNM Foundation trustee and an officer of the Harwood Museum Governing Board. She has spent a lifetime creating the conditions in which others can learn.

Her UNM story began as a student and now makes room for new artists to begin theirs. Be the reason a young person encounters art not as something distant, but as a living possibility placed within reach.