Exhibitions Archive

Ochre is a family of mineral pigments made from iron oxides and hydroxides, commonly known as rust. Humans have collected ochre for at least 500,000 years, and it underpins the earliest evidence of symbolic culture, and later, figurative art, in the archaeological record. Pigment of Imagination explores the dual identity of ochre––it is both mineral and pigment––and the ways individuals and communities have used it to express complex relationships with the environment. To paint with ochre is to paint with the earth itself; it is a means of embodiment, of putting the land beneath one’s feet and into the storyscapes of cultural knowledge. The works exhibited here––from Africa, Australia, Oceania, and North and South America––reflect the global distribution of ochre and its universal appeal as both material and metaphor. To view these works is to visit the landscape of their creation, to bear witness to place as much as meaning.

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After dark, people passing the Hood Museum are able to experience a video work, Ga Bose Gangwe, by the South African artist Mohau Modisakeng. This graceful expression of resilience and determination is on display in the vitrine window above the north entrance to the museum until July 1, 2023. The title of the video comes from a Setswana (a Bantu language spoken in Southern Africa) proverb, phiri o rile ga bo se gangwe, that translates to “better luck next time” or “do again" or "try again.” Using the movements of a group of Black male dancers as metaphor, Modisakeng reflects on how the specter of colonialism weighs down the aspirations of post-apartheid South Africa and other post-colonial countries.

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The works of Mika Rottenberg and Luis Gispert use a heightened sense of reality to explore ideas of class, gender, and identity. Surrealist at times, their photography and video installations are both filled with exuberant iconography and highly choreographed––every element is carefully orchestrated, from the extravagant outfits to the upscale mise-en-scène and the subjects’ aggressive and theatrical gestures. Their works draw from Social Surrealism, a movement which borrows from European surrealist techniques of the 1920s and 30s to provide social commentary and criticism. The surrealist art movement of the early twentieth century challenged the status-quo and explored new understandings of the unconscious. The rise of revolutionary thinking and liberation of the mind and artistic expression also turned to social and political activism. Rottenberg and Gispert explore similar ideas through the lens of the Latinx experience of contemporary capitalism.

A Space for Dialogue is a student-curated exhibition program that began in 2001. Hood Museum of Art interns create an installation drawn from the museum's permanent collection by engaging with every aspect of curation, from doing research and selecting objects, to choosing frames and a wall color, to planning a layout and writing labels and a brochure, to giving a public talk. There have been over 100 A Space for Dialogue exhibitions on a wide variety of themes.

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In the 1960s, activist Chicano artists forged a remarkable history of printmaking that remains vital today. Many artists came of age during the civil rights, labor, anti-war, feminist and LGBTQ+ movements and channeled the period’s social activism into assertive aesthetic statements that announced a new political and cultural consciousness among people of Mexican descent in the United States. ¡Printing the Revolution! explores the rise of Chicano graphics within these early social movements and the ways in which Chicanx artists since then have advanced innovative printmaking practices attuned to social justice.

More than reflecting the need for social change, the works in this exhibition project and revise notions of Chicanx identity, spur political activism and school viewers in new understandings of U.S. and international history. By employing diverse visual and artistic modes from satire, to portraiture, appropriation, conceptualism, and politicized pop, the artists in this exhibition build an enduring and inventive graphic tradition that has yet to be fully integrated into the history of U.S. printmaking.

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Ink Reimagined is a groundbreaking solo exhibition of contemporary Korean ink painter Park Dae Sung’s works. Park, who lost an arm during the tumultuous pre-Korean War period, is a self-taught artist who saw nature as his teacher and thus traveled widely, finding inspiration in China, Taiwan, New York City, and the mountains of North Korea. Featuring paintings of enormous scale and refined technique, Park’s ongoing contemplation of ancient landscapes and objects asks the viewer to rethink modernity via tradition and gain a fresh appreciation for the diversity of styles—from dramatic to meditative to bursting with movement—possible through ink and brush. Due to popular demand, two of the three galleries in the exhibition will remain on view through May 20!

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The formation of identity is a continuous and fluid reshaping of the self. Through the works of various contemporary American artists, Taking Up Space explores the physical and emotional relationships they have with their bodies, and the ways in which public expression of identity shapes lived experience.

A Space for Dialogue is a student-curated exhibition program that began in 2001. Hood Museum of Art interns create an installation drawn from the museum's permanent collection by engaging with every aspect of curation, from doing research and selecting objects, to choosing frames and a wall color, to planning a layout and writing labels and a brochure, to giving a public talk. There have been over 100 A Space for Dialogue exhibitions on a wide variety of themes.

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