Barbara Smith Coleman

Visionary, artist, and founder of Smith Farm Center

Washington, DC artist Barbara Smith Coleman founded the organization, originally known as Smith Farm Center for Healing and the Arts, in 1996 after a life-transforming experience at a residential program for people living with cancer in Bristol, England. That experience led Barbara to consult with Michael Lerner, PhD, of Commonweal, founder of a California-based program whose retreats focus on the mental and spiritual effects of cancer. The Commonweal Cancer Help Program is well known through the Bill Moyers PBS special, “Healing and the Mind.”  It became Barbara Smith Coleman’s life mission to offer similar programs in the nation’s capital and to offer the healing powers of art and creativity to people facing life-threatening illness, their caregivers, and medical professionals.

In September 2001, Ms. Coleman donated her partial ownership of a two-story building at 1632 U Street, NW in Washington, DC with the organization purchasing the remaining interest. This space is the permanent site for offices and on-site programs as well as a newly expanded art gallery dedicated to the healing power of the arts. Barbara Smith Coleman passed away in 2003 at the age of 71, but her philosophy, work, and spirit live on.

“I hope Smith Farm will maintain a deep respect for people and that we make no one feel more alone because of our actions or attitudes. Truth — we tell the truth as best we are able to perceive it. We deliver what we promise and promise only what can be delivered. We are considerate and tolerant. We dream. We care for our gifts as a sacred trust and spend them more carefully than we would our own. We are ready for a change. We delight in a challenge. We laugh. We work to maintain our personal lives in a state of grace, so that this grace will be available to those in need of our service.”

— From a journal entry by Barbara Smith Coleman