THE ORIGIN
SMFA Art School Cheerleaders
The Origin, September 1995–1998
Art school life became chantable.
The Art School Cheerleaders began at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in September 1995. What started as an art-school response to a feminist cheerleading workshop became a collective performance project that turned the anxieties, absurdities, and contradictions of art education into chants, formations, uniforms, and public spectacle.
They cheered for art. They mocked art-world seriousness. They made the question every artist hears — “What are you going to do with that degree?” — into something public, funny, performable, and repeatable.
HOW IT STARTED
From feminist cheerleading to art-school satire.
The project grew out of an SMFA-sponsored workshop by performance artist Kim Irwin titled “How to Be a Feminist Cheerleader.” Amanda Blandford Kriegel, Jessica Brand, and Peter Kearney attended the workshop and wrote the first cheer, beginning: “SMFA! Cigarettes, coffee every day!”
Soon after, they invited Rebecca Goldberg and Stephen Bailey to join the first official practice. The first squad began meeting upstairs in a room normally used for figure drawing classes.
Rebecca, drawing on her experience with the Montgomery Blair High School cheerleading squad, helped translate cheerleading structures, timing, movement, and call-and-response into a new art-school language. The group wrote as a collective, adapting inherited cheer forms and creating original chants that addressed art-school labor, artist stereotypes, institutional culture, public arts funding, and the absurdity of trying to make a life in art.
First squad list:
- Amanda Blandford Kriegel
- Jessica Brand
- Peter Kearney
- Rebecca Goldberg
- Stephen Bailey
What they made
Cheerleading as medium — The group used chants, formations, pom-poms, uniforms, smiles, timing, and repetition as artistic materials.
Art-school satire — The cheers addressed art degrees, student poverty, institutional culture, public funding, censorship, and the pressure to justify creative life.
Public advocacy — The squad performed in art contexts and public arts-advocacy settings, turning support for art into spectacle.
Documentable performance — Photographs, flyers, videos, press clippings, uniforms, and cheer texts became part of the work’s afterlife.
Featured Evidence
LATER RECOGNITION
The SMFA Cheerleaders return to institutional memory.
In 2018, the SMFA Art Cheerleaders were included in Boston University Art Gallery’s retrospective on Boston performance art and counter-culture in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Art in America wrote: “A display of red-and-black uniforms and pom-poms belonging to the feminist Art School Cheerleaders, who were active in 1996 and 1997 at the Museum School, perhaps most directly conveyed the show’s main takeaway: the championing of anti-conformist values lies at the heart of Boston’s most compelling work.”
In 2026, Tufts University Art Galleries includes the 1990s-era SMFA Cheerleaders in SMFA at 150: Looking Back, an exhibition tracing key movements, alumni, archives, lore, and community memory across 150 years of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.
The exhibition places the SMFA Cheerleaders alongside other episodic histories of the school, from curriculum shifts and anti-war poster culture to live performances that became part of SMFA lore and creative institutional memory.
Sources: Tufts University Art Galleries | SMFA 150 Exhibitions
GO DEEPER
Explore the SMFA Archive
SMFA Photos
Selected images from performances, press packages, and public actions,s.
SMFA Press
Reviews, interviews, and features from the Boston Globe, New York Times, and more.
Audio / Cheers
Original audio recordings and transcripts of squad cheers and soundscapes.
NEXT: RICHMOND REVIVAL
© The Art Cheerleaders. Archive materials are presented for historical, educational, and documentary purposes. Please contact The Art Cheerleaders for permission before use.