LEFT Reconstitution installed in Lathrop Gallery. Photo by Alison Palizzolo.
2019–20 Annual Report: Exhibitions
Chapter threeWhile the pandemic cut short our plans for an ambitious exhibitions season, we take this moment to celebrate the many voices that contributed to our exhibition programming to date. Before our doors closed on March 14, our team installed thirteen shows, including five student-curated A Space for Dialogue exhibitions. Our goal this year was to continue mining the depths of our permanent collection while also welcoming loan shows for the first time since reopening. School Photos and Their Afterlives, conceptualized by guest curators Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer, brought together works from around the world in order to examine the impact of a familiar photographic genre across geographies. CIPX Dartmouth with Kali Spitzer and Will Wilson—short for Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange—turned our Cheatham Gallery into a studio and initiated an important dialogue that rippled throughout the community in the form of a literal exchange between each sitter and artist. We were also honored to host the first faculty show since our closure with the beautiful In the Midst of Something Splendid: Recent Works by Colleen Randall. From the permanent collection, Art for Dartmouth brought recent gifts to the museum out of storage and into the galleries in a celebration of Dartmouth's 250th anniversary; The Embodiment of Language explored the relationship between language and Blackness in the United States; Shifting the Lens: Contemporary Indigenous Australian Photography featured seven artists and highlighted the complexity of the Indigenous experience in Australia; and Reconstitution challenged us by questioning what it means to be "contemporary."
ABOVE Artists Will Wilson (left) and Kali Spitzer (right) set up their equipment in the galleries on the first day of the their residency. Photo by Alison Palizzolo.
FY 2019–2020 Exhibitions
Art for Dartmouth
August 17, 2019, to March 13, 2020* (closed early due to pandemic; originally scheduled to close March 15, 2020)
Luise and Morton Kaish Gallery, Ivan Albright Gallery, Class of 1967 Gallery, First-Floor Corridor
John R. Stomberg, Virginia Rice Kelly 1961s Director
The Hood Museum of Art has long thrived through the generosity of its donors. The building itself is a testimony to generations of philanthropy. In honor of the 250th anniversary of Dartmouth, our supporters once again demonstrated their steadfast faith in the power of art within an academic museum setting. Throughout the galleries last season, new gifts of art, whether on display individually or comprising complete installations, marked this important milestone for Dartmouth.
Reconstitution
January 2, 2020, to June 20, 2021* (extended due to pandemic; originally scheduled to close May 31, 2020)
Dorothy and Churchill Lathrop Gallery
Jessica Hong, Associate Curator of Global Contemporary Art
Institutional spaces have long privileged Euro-American narratives, which has had powerful, even dangerous consequences in our culture and society. Artists in Reconstitution foster the evolution of previously entrenched narratives as they remind us that we are all responsible agents in the complicated processes of writing current and future histories.
This exhibition was organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, and generously supported by the Philip Fowler 1927 Memorial Fund.
In the Midst of Something Splendid
January 2, 2020, to March 14, 2021* (extended due to pandemic; originally scheduled to close May 31, 2020)
William B. Jaffe and Evenlyn A. Jaffe Hall Galleries
Katherine W. Hart, Senior Curator of Collections and Barbara C. and Harvey P. Hood 1918 Curator of Academic Programming and John R. Stomberg, Virginia Rice Kelly 1961s Director
This ongoing two-gallery exhibition features abstract paintings on canvas and paper by this well-respected member of the Dartmouth studio art faculty, including new works created in 2018 and 2019, alongside slightly earlier works from her Immanence and Syncope series.
This exhibition was organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, and generously supported by the Philip Fowler 1927 Memorial Fund.
School Photos and Their Afterlives
January 8 to March 13, 2020* (closed early due to pandemic; originally scheduled to close April 12, 2020)
Northeast Gallery
Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer
This exhibition looked critically at how a ubiquitous yet unremarked vernacular genre has been used to advance ideologies of assimilation and exclusion but also to inspire social and political change. It set an array of school photos from across photography's histories and geographies in dialogue with works by contemporary artists who have reframed them. Artists featured in the exhibition included Marcelo Brodsky, Steven Deo, Mirta Kupferminc, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Silvina Der Meguerditchian, Diane Meyer, Vik Muniz, Lorie Novak, Sandra Ramos, Tomoko Sawada, Abdel Salam Shehada, Carrie Mae Weems, and David Wojnarowicz.
This exhibition was organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, and was generously supported by The Charles Gilman Family Endowment.
CIPX Dartmouth with Will Wilson and Kali Spitzer
January 15 to September 5, 2021* (extended due to pandemic; originally scheduled to close March 29, 2020)
Owen Robertson Cheatham Gallery
Jami C. Powell, Associate Curator of Native American Art, and Morgan E. Freedman, Native American Art Fellow
Conceptualized by photographer Will Wilson, the collaborative project Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange (CIPX) responds to the ethnographic photography of Native Americans that has been widely circulated since the beginning at the turn of the twentieth century. During a ten-day residency at the museum, Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena) and Will Wilson (Diné) took tintype portraits of Dartmouth community members, then exhibited selected images.
This exhibition was organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, and was generously supported by The Charles Gilman Family Endowment.
The Embodiment of Language
January 18 to March 13, 2020* (closed early due to pandemic; originally scheduled to close May 24, 2020)
First Floor Corridor
Morgan E. Freedman, Native American Art Fellow, and Thomas H. Price, Curatorial Assistant
Nearly sixty years after Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech at Dartmouth, the Hood Museum of Art, together with the College, reflected on his legacy as an orator. King's speeches remind us of the aesthetic choices he made through his particular use of language—his cadence, tone, and intensity—all informed by his preaching as a Baptist minister. The exhibition The Embodiment of Language, in turn, considered specific relationships between language and Blackness in the context of US history. The artists represented configure letters, symbols, and literature to create a fertile ground upon which to articulate both personal and collective experience.
This exhibition was organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, and was generously supported by the Leon C. 1927, Charles L. 1955, and Andrew J. 1984 Greenebaum Fund.
Shifting the Lens: Contemporary Indigenous Photography
February 15 to March 13, 2020* (closed early due to pandemic; originally schedule to close May 24, 2020)
Kaish Gallery
Jami C. Powell, Associate Curator of Native American ArtDrawing from the Hood Museum of Art's collection of Indigenous Australian art, Shifting the Lens featured photography by Christian Thompson, Fiona Foley, Bindi Cole, Michael Cook, Darren Siwes, Tony Albert, and Michael Riley that interrogates and conveys the multidimensionality of Indigenous Australian experiences.
This exhibition was organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, and was generously supported by The Owen and Wagner Collection of Aboriginal Australian Art Endowment Fund.
Form and Relation: Contemporary Native Ceramics
January 5, 2021, to January 2, 2022 (opened late and extended due to pandemic, originally scheduled to open March 14 and close August 16, 2020)
Citrin Family Gallery, Engles Family Gallery, Harteveldt Family Gallery, and Kaish Stair
Jami C. Powell, Associate Curator of Native American Art, and Morgan E. Freedman, Native American Art Fellow
This exhibition showcases the versatility of ceramics and the many forms it takes through the hands of six Indigenous artists from various regions within what is now the United States. Through their innovative and critical work, Anita Fields, Courtney M. Leonard, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Ruben Olguin, Rose B. Simpson, and Roxanne Swentzell wrestle with concepts such as community, identity, gender, land, extraction, language, and responsibility.
This project was made possible, in part, through the Diversifying Art Museum Leadership Initiative, funded by the Walton Family Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
ABOVE Curator of Academic Programming Amelia Kahl introduces Hood Museum Intern Victoria McCraven during her "A Spoce for Dialogue" gallery talk. Photo by Alison Palizzolo.
A Space for Dialogue
Highlighting student curatorial and educational work is a key part of the Hood Museum's mission, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the longtime exhibition series A Space for Dialogue: Fresh Perspectives on the Permanent Collection from Dartmouth's Students. This series of single-gallery exhibitions curated by Dartmouth students from the museum collection has been ongoing since 2002. The project forms a crucial aspect of the Hood Museum internship as students gain valuable, hands-on curatorial experience and work closely with staff across departments. The students choose a wide range of themes, subjects, time periods, and materials for their exhibitions, showcasing the breadth and depth of both the museum's collections and Dartmouth student scholarship. Interns identify and research a topic, select objects, lay out the exhibition, write label text and a brochure, and oversee the installation. The project culminates in a public talk. Due to the ongoing pandemic, the 2019/2020 student-curated shows will be on view in the calendar year 2021, while 2020/2021 interns will work with their supervisors on virtual exhibitions.
A Space for Dialogue was founded with support from the Class of 1948 and made possible with generous endowments from the Class of 1967, Bonnie and Richard Reiss Jr. '66, and Pamela J. Joyner '70.
Creating Knowledge and Control, A Space for Dialogue 95
August 10 to September 22, 2019
Alvin P. Gutman Gallery
Annabelle Bardenheier
Creating Knowledge and Control features works that explore technology as a top-down disciplinary tool that restructures space, time, and the relations among people and activities. Today, such tools are created and used not only by governments, but also by multinational corporations that leverage the potential of managed information systems and big data. As technology and information management evolves, questions arise regarding whether and how we should govern these tools of control and surveillance, and this installation explores these issues.
The Politics of Pink, A Space for Dialogue 96
September 28 to November 3, 2019
Alvin P. Gutman Gallery
Charlotte Grussing
Pink is not just a pretty color. This exhibition explored all things pink, from its problematic associations with femininity, gender norms, and race to its contemporary reinvention in activism. The use of the color pink, these works make clear, transcends the purely aesthetic.
Black Bodies and the Cross, A Space for Dialogue 97
November 9, 2019, to January 5, 2020
Victoria McCraven
Black Bodies on the Cross attempted to capture the dissonance and duality present in the Black Christian experience, as seen through the eyes of postwar and contemporary African American artists including Romare Bearden, Ashley Bryan, Kara Walker, and Enrico Riley. By inserting Black subjects into Biblical narratives, these artists explore the ways in which the Black experience can be understood as part of a universalizing Christian narrative that, ironically, often excludes Black subjects.
Vision 2020: What Do You See?, A Space for Dialogue 98
January 11 to March 1, 2020
Alvin P. Gutman Gallery
Devon D. Mifflin
Mass media and technology inform not only our understanding of the contemporary world but also our self-perception. Vision 2020: What Do You See? highlighted works from the Hood Museum's collection that grapple with the impact of visual media and technology on body image in the 20th and 21st centuries. The artists in this exhibition encourage conversation about beauty ideals, gender, self-perception, and agency in mass media.
When Art Intersects History, A Space for Dialogue 99
March 7, 2020, to February 28, 2021* (extended due to pandemic, originally scheduled to close April 26, 2020)
Alvin P. Gutman Gallery
Allison Carey
What happens when we assess a work of art as a historical document? When Art Intersects History examines works of American modern art that document the struggle for equality during the second half of the 20th century. This politically charged era reached a climax in the 1960s and 1970s with the confluence of the civil rights movement, women's rights campaigns, the gay rights movement, and Vietnam War protests. All of this resistance was propelled by a mounting countercultural cry for equality and social justice. This exhibition considers how American artists have shared their perspectives on these galvanizing historic moments, and how their work still impacts us today.