Owen F. Smith

Owen F. Smith  1958-2021

Owen Smith joined the Department of Art faculty in 1991. In his 30-year UMaine career, he inspired countless undergraduate and graduate students with his teaching and creative projects, and he pushed traditional institutional boundaries to create innovative new programs and initiatives. Smith was an internationally respected scholar of Fluxus art forms; author of the seminal text on Fluxus, “Fluxus: The History of An Attitude” (1998); and a renowned artist working in the Fluxus tradition. Among his many awards, Smith received UMaine’s Presidential Outstanding Teaching Award in 2000 and the Presidential Research and Creative Achievement Award in 2009.  

Smith was a professor of intermedia, and founding director of both the IMFA Program and the Innovative Media Research and Commercialization (IMRC) Center.