In 1996, Smith was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a Membre titulaire, Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art, serving as the Australian representative and Vice-President of the latter 1999–2003. He has been a visiting professor at the Universities of California, San Diego, Chicago, Duke University, Pennsylvania, Queensland, and is currently a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney. Smith has also been awarded a number of prestigious research fellowships including, in recent years, being named a Getty Scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles 2001-2; Fondation de France Chercheur Invité at the Institut national d'histoire de l'art, Paris, 2007; and GlaxoSmithKlein Senior Fellow at the National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, Raleigh-Durham, NC.