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Washington, DC
In 1960, the Corcoran held a one-man exhibition Ten Year Retrospective to show Smith's artwork. This show featured 36 drawings and paintings, many of which were on loan from their West coast owners.
During the 1960s, Arthur Hall Smith worked for both the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian and the Natonal Bureau of Agriculture. There he provided numberous illustrations for exhibits and catalogs.
Smith was also Curatorial Assistant at the Phillips Collection, in Washington, DC from 1960 to 1974. There he worked with both Duncan and Marjorie Phillips, from whom he learned about many aspects of museum work and developed a keen sense of conaisseurship.
Arthur Hall Smith taught at George Washington University for 23 years. There, he inspired students to share observations through painting. He challenged every student's work with the same three questions he asked of professional art: What was the artist trying to do? Did he succeed? Was it worth doing?
Smith's teaching style was best documented in a short film "Portrait of a Proefssor" by John Conforti. Arthur Hall Smith described his syle as largely informal and stressed the importance of the "inner light" in creating art work. In his own words:
"You can teach drawing. Drawing is a way of learnng to see... You can teach drawing like you can teach touch typing. But just because you've learned touch typing doesn't mean you produce literature. It's a sensitivity factor; it's very mysterious. There's a tenacity some people have."
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