This chapter outlines engagement for campus, public, and K–12 audiences. Section narratives detail highlights from specific program areas.
The Hood Museum of Art produced a year of successful programs for every sector of our public and campus audiences. Meaningful engagement with diverse audiences is at the core of our practice, as is programming that also celebrates diversity of cultures, ideas, and perspectives. Aside from a few exceptions in spring 2021, all engagement this year was virtual. Nonetheless, with digital access to most of the Hood Museum's collections, staff produced hundreds of customized classes, tours, lectures, workshops, social experiences, gallery talks, and conversations, inspired by both current installations and the collections writ large.
The staff's increasing facility with the available digital platforms allowed them to broaden their understanding of the museum's audience, reaching people on campus and regionally, as well as expanding our global networks. As a result, virtual programming will remain a robust option for engagement moving forward.
ABOVE Studio Art 27 and Studio Art 28 – Printmaking I and II with Professor Tricia Treacy. Amelia Kahl is lecturing from the Harteveldt Study Gallery while Kait Armstrong is live streaming to remote students. Photo by Steve Perkins.
Curricular Engagement
The museum's academic programming area has shown immense adaptability over the past year. Dartmouth students and faculty continued to engage with the museum's collection throughout the pandemic, embracing new tools and approaches. Throughout summer 2020, Amelia Kahl, Barbara C. and Harvey P. Hood 1918 Curator of Academic Programming, engaged classes over Zoom. Teaching remotely continued throughout the year using PowerPoint and VoiceThread. In fall 2020, Randall Kuhlman, Center for Object Study attendant, and Kait Armstrong, visitor services guide, quickly picked up skills for live-streaming and video recording using the Bernstein Center for Object Study's new equipment. By the second week of classes, we were streaming from BCOS, allowing classes to see objects in context and to get a sense of scale. The first class to reenter the galleries was Digital Drawing in mid-October. Three students set up in Kim Gallery to draw in person, while two separate camera set-ups provided drawing options for students attending remotely.
A highlight of fall term was when Professor Karol Kawiaka and her teaching assistant, Ike Abioye, visited BCOS to scan objects and create digital models. They borrowed equipment from Thayer School of Engineering, and students in Kawiaka's computer science class Digital Fabrication and Rapid Prototyping watched via Zoom.
Winter term continued this mixed approach with the use of equipment dictated by the needs of the course. Academic Programming continued robust engagement with a range of classes and departments. For the first time, we worked with the engineering class Biological Physics. Amelia Kahl and Professor Kimberley Samkoe asked students to identity and describe biological processes in works by artists such as James Gillray, Eastman Johnson, and Ann Parker.
Spring term brought students back into BCOS, with classes divided into small groups of two or three that visited in person over several days. The English class Tales of the Avant-Garde had two such clusters of visits, as did Spanish 7, Mural Art in Mexico. Jami Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art, taught Native American Art and Material live-streaming from BCOS throughout the term with the help of Taylor Payer.
Academic Programming also hosted two assistant professors in Latin American, Latino, & Caribbean Studies for Mellon Fellowships. Jorge Cuéllar developed resources for his classes such as Land, Belonging, and Social Change in Latin America; Politics and Culture in Transnational Central America; and Hemispheric Indigeneity. Marcela di Blasi, whose Mellon Fellowship was cut short in 2020 due to the pandemic, returned to complete her fellowship using the collection to augment courses including Crossing Over: Latino Roots and Transition; and Intergenerational Conflict in Latinx Literature.
African and African-American Studies 15 (*See History 66)
African and African-American Studies 88.11 (*See English 62.22)
African and African-American Studies 82.05 (*See English 52.03)
Anthropology 03, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Sienna Craig
Anthropology 11, Ancient Native Americans
Madeleine McLeester
Anthropology 32, Anthropology of Tibet and Himalayas
Kenneth Bauer
Anthropology 39.01, Archaeology of the Middle East
Jesse Casana
Anthropology 50.34, Peoples of Oceania
Meredith Ferguson
Anthropology 55, Anthropology of Global Health
Anne Sosin
Art History 7.10, Egyptomania
Steven Kangas
Art History 10.03, Art in Egypt
Steven Kangas
Art History 12.01, Roman Art
Steven Kangas
Art History 28.09, Art on the Move: Renaissance Italy and the Islamic World
Elizabeth Kassler-Taub
Art History 62.30, Japanese Prints
Allen Hockley
Asian Societies Cultures Languages 62.12 (*See Art History 62.30)
Classical Studies 04, Classical Mythology
Simone Oppen
Classical Studies 06, Introduction to Classical Archaeology
Flint Dibble
Classical Studies 18, History of the Roman Empire
Roberta Stewart
College Course 21, What's in Your Shoebox
Prudence Merton and Francine A'Ness
Computer Science 29.05, Digital Fabrication and Rapid Prototyping
Karol Kawiaka
Computer Science 129.01, Topics in Digital Arts
Karol Kawiaka
English 2.01, Literary History II
Michael Chaney
English 7.47, Tales of the Avant-Garde
Andrew McCann
English 23.01, Romantic Literature: Aesthetics and Ideology from the French Revolution to Frankenstein
Alysia Garrow
English 52.03, Dave the Potter
Michael Chaney
English 62.22, Atlantic Slavery to Atlantic Freedom
Alysia Garrison
Engineering 30, Biological Physics
Kimberley Samkoe
Environmental Studies 18.01 (*See Native American Studies 18.01)
Environmental Studies 85.01 (*See Native American Studies 81.04)
Film 03, Digital Arts and Culture
John Bell
Film Studies 48.02 (*See Studio Art 17.20)
Geology 16.01, A Climate for Human Security
Justin Mankin
German 003, Intermediate German
Lisa Oberberger
History 02, #EverythingHasAHistory
Julia Rabig
History 63.02, Reading Artifacts: The Material Culture of Science
Whitney Barlow Robles
History 66, History of Africa since 1800
Naaborko Sackeyfio-Lenoch
History 94.06 (*See Classical Studies 18.01)
Italian 10.06, Culture of Food in Italian Literature
Matteo Gilebbi
Latin American / Caribbean Studies 1.01, Introduction to Latin American and the Caribbean
Lisa Baldez
Latin American / Caribbean Studies 1.02, Introduction to Latin American and the Caribbean
Lisa Baldez
Latin American / Caribbean Studies 36 (*See Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 30.05)
Latin American / Caribbean Studies 22.11, Latinx Intergenerational Literature
Marcela di Blasi
Middle Eastern Studies 3.02 (*See Anthropology 39.01)
Middle Eastern Studies 18.02 (*See Art History 28.09)
Music 3.02, American Music: Covers, Theft, and Musical Borrowing
Richard Beaudoin
Native American Studies 11 (*See Anthropology 11)
Native American Studies 18.01, Indigenous Environmental Studies
Nicholas Reo
Native American Studies 30.21, Native American Art and Material
Jami Powell
Native American Studies 42.01, Gender Issues and Native American Life
Jami Powell
Native American Studies 81.04, Land, Love, and Kinship
Nicholas Reo
Philosophy 22.01, Feminism and Philosophy
Susan Brison
Physics 30 (*See Engineering 30)
Portuguese 8, Brazilian Portraits
Carlos Cortez Minchillo
Psychological and Brain Services 7.03, Science and Pseudoscience
John Pfister
Studio Art 15.01, Drawing I
Esme Thompson
Studio Art 15.02, Drawing I
Karol Kawiaka
Studio Art 17.08, Digital Drawing
Karol Kawiaka
Studio Art 17.20, Video Art
Mary Flanagan
Studio Art 27, Printmaking I
Tricia Treacy
Studio Art 28, Printmaking II
Tricia Treacy
Studio Art 29.01, Photography I
Christina Seely
Studio Art 29.02, Photography I
Christina Seely
Studio Art 30.01, Photography II
Christina Seely
Studio Art 65.01, Architecture I
Karol Kawiaka
Spanish 7.02, Mural Art in Mexico
Douglas Moody
Spanish 80.21, The Boricua Gaze: Decolonialism in Puerto Rican Visual Cultures
Israel Reyes
Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 10.01, Sex, Gender, and Society
Douglas Moody
Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 30.05, Maid in America
Francine A'Ness
Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 40.01 (*See Native American Studies 40.01)
Writing Program 2.05, Composition and Research I
Douglas Moody
Writing Program 3.05, US History, Immigration, and Native Peoples
Douglas Moody
Writing Program 5.30, Representing Immigrants
Melissa Zeiger
Writing Program 7.28, Team Communication & Identity: One Team, Two Teams, Red Team, Blue Team
Svetlana Grushina
Museum Collecting 101 had a very passionate and engaged group of 15 students who met over Zoom for five weeks during spring term. It included majors in physics, economics, psychology, computer science, as well as art history and studio art. Diana Niles '21, a Hood Museum intern, assisted with the class including arranging a very informative remote session with a gallerist. The theme was Latino and Latinx art, and the students chose a striking photograph of a laundromat seen from the street titled Lavanderia #5, Los Angeles (2002) by Christina Fernandez.
ABOVE Dartmouth students on a Tiny Tour of the museum during its closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo by Isadora Italia.
With the museum galleries closed over the summer 2020 term, three staff members in the academic programming and education departments collaborated to develop Escape to the Outdoors, a fully virtual game centered on our outdoor sculpture collection. The game, which could be played both remotely from home or on campus with a mobile device, allowed campus and community audiences to interact with art, even while our galleries were closed. Throughout the year, our staff hosted 15 separate programs using this game. Twelve were fully online and three were hosted in person with campus groups. According to our website statistics, over 900 unique users from around the world engaged with the game.
At the beginning of fall term, the Hood Museum participated in several virtual New Student Orientation events, hosting info sessions and Zoom meals for students interested in getting involved. Other co-curricular engagement efforts remained exclusively virtual until late October, when the museum received permission to begin welcoming students back into the galleries in small groups, on a by-appointment basis. With this permission, we began offering Tiny Tours (and eventually Tiny Visits) for students several times each week. Between late October 2020 and July 2021, the museum offered 128 tours and visits for 459 students. 10 staff members across visitor services, education, curatorial, and academic programming departments participated by leading tours and accompanying students on their visits.
In addition to this in-person and hybrid engagement, the Hood Museum collaborated with several campus departments and student groups to offer virtual programs. Working with the Tucker Center for Spiritual and Ethical Life, our staff developed and led an interactive conversation centering work by modern and contemporary artists who reimagined difficult histories to explore themes of home, memory, and persistence, and what the past can teach us about the present. Another facilitated workshop, titled Women Artists in Dialogue and hosted in collaboration with Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, centered works by Black female artists Wangechi Mutu, Carrie Mae Weems, María Magdalena Campons-Pons, and Alison Saar.
ABOVE Dartmouth students on a Tiny Tour of the museum during its closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo by Alison Palizzolo.
July 13
Facilitated Experience | Geisel: Health Care Foundations—Training the Eye
Neely McNulty, Hood Foundation Associate Curator of Education, and Vivian Ladd, teaching specialist, led a session for the Dartmouth Foundations Program, a week-long summer experience for pre-med students, organized by Geisel faculty and staff.
August 6
Facilitated Experience | Geisel: Health Care Foundations
August 13
Customized Engagement | First Year Enrichment Program (FYSEP) with Douglas Moody and John Pfister
August 17–19
Virtual Tuck Launch 2020 Program—Days 1–3
August 25
Customized Engagement | First Year Enrichment Program (FYSEP) with Francine A'Ness
September 10
Virtual Public Art Tour for Tuck Partners
September 11
Virtual Zoom Meal with the Hood Museum of Art
September 13
Virtual Involvement Fair—Museum Club
October 6
Virtual Student Lunch with Jasmine Wahi and Yesomi Umolu
A chance for students to meet with the 2020 Root Lecture speakers Jasmine Wahi and Yesomi Umolu for discussion and Q&A as a follow up to the Friday lecture on October 2.
October 23
Tour of Public Art for Allen House
October 24
Tour of Public Art for East Wheelock House
October 27, 30
Tiny Tours of the Hood Museum's Galleries
October 29
Tiny Tour of Form and Relation: Contemporary Native Ceramics
October 29
Virtual OSHER Africa Class
October 30
Public Art Tour for Dartmouth Students
November 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13
Tiny Tours of the Hood Museum's Galleries
November 4, 5, 11, 12
Tiny Tours of Form and Relation: Contemporary Native American Ceramics
November 4
Make Art and De-stress with Allen House
November 8
Escape to the Outdoors with Young Professionals at Dartmouth
December 3
Virtual Escape to the Outdoors with Graduate Student Council
December 8, 9, 11, 16, 18
Tiny Tours of the Hood Museum's Galleries
January 26
Tiny Visit to the Hood Museum
January 27, 28, 29
Tiny Tours of the Hood Museum's Galleries
February 1, 8
Tiny Tours: Native American Art
February 4, 5
Tiny Tours of the Hood Museum's Galleries
February 5
Virtual Event | IndigiNerds
Jami Powell and Michelle Brown hosted a series of livestream events featuring Indigenous video games and developers.
February 10
Facilitated Experience | Geisel Health Foundations—Engaging the Senses
March 9
Tiny Visit to the Hood Museum
March 10, 16, 19, 24
Tiny Tours of the Hood Museum's Galleries
March 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25
Tiny Visits with VSGs (Visitor Services Guides)
March 17
Virtual Escape to the Outdoors with Young Professionals at Dartmouth
March 18
Tiny Tour: Native American Art
March 26
Tiny Tour: Private Tour for President's Office Staff
April 2
Virtual Dartmouth Alliance for Children of Color | Circles and Color: Making Cool Art Together
Programming Interns Courtney McKee '21 and Caroline Cook '21 led a virtual hands-on activity for the Dartmouth Alliance for Children of Color's mentors and mentees centered on Alma Thomas's Wind Dancing with Spring Flowers (1969). Isadora Italia, campus engagement coordinator, and Neely McNulty provided support.
April 7
Virtual Conversation | Stories of Persistence: Reflecting through Art
Neely McNulty led an interactive conversation centering work by modern and contemporary artists who imagined difficult histories to explore themes of home, memory, and persistence, and what the past can teach us about the present. Cohosted with the Tucker Center for Spiritual and Ethical Life.
April 14, 15, 16, 17, 21, 23, 24
Tiny Visits with VSGs (Visitor Services Guides)
April 14, 15, 21
Tiny Tours of the Hood Museum's Galleries
April 15
Tiny Tour: Native American Art
April 23
Tiny Tour for Provost's Office
May 1
Deconstructing Nature: Form and Color
The Programming Interns, Caroline Cook and Courtney McKee, organized an outdoor art-making experience by Bartlett Tower, encouraging students to create art with nature-inspired themes and materials.
May 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29
Tiny Visits with VSGs (Visitor Services Guides)
May 5, 12, 19
Tiny Tours of the Hood Museum's Galleries
May 11
Tiny Tour: The New Now: Contemporary Art at the Hood Museum
May 20
Customized Engagement | Tuck: Strategy in Emerging Markets
May 20
Tiny Tour for Tuck Students
May 20
(Re)Create a Canvas with Museum Club
The Museum Club's Campus Outreach Committee hosted a paint night for students in Collis CommonGround. Students received a blank canvas and set of paints, and drew inspiration from works of art in the Hood Museum's collection as they (re)created their own works of art.
May 25
Virtual Discussion | Women Artists in Dialogue
Vivian Ladd and Isadora Italia facilitated a workshop centered on works by Black female artists Wangechi Mutu, Carrie Mae Weems, María Magdalena Campons-Pons, and Alison Saar. Hosted in collaboration with Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.
May 25
Tiny Tour: The New Now: Contemporary Art at the Hood Museum
May 26
Tiny Tour: The Butt of the Joke
May 27
Tiny Tour: Native American Art
June 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29
Tiny Visits with VSGs (Visitor Services Guides)
June 1, 4
Tiny Tours of the Hood Museum's Galleries
June 3
Tiny Tour for Thayer Advancement
June 8
Tiny Tour: The New Now: Contemporary Art at the Hood Museum
June 10
Customized Engagement | Public Art: Senior Week Tour
June 21
Facilitated Experience | Geisel: Health Care Foundations
LEFT A screenshot of a Museum Club meeting with Professor Chad Elias.
In the fall of 2020, the Museum Club embarked on its third year. Throughout the fall, winter, and spring terms, students gathered virtually on Zoom to learn about the Hood Museum of Art, gain a better understanding of museum practice, and use their knowledge to launch new student engagement initiatives.
A new development for the club was the creation of committee groups. Using Zoom breakout room technology to their advantage, members spent a portion of their weekly meetings gathering in small teams, each developing and launching a unique student engagement project at the end of the term.
These projects included: a digital scavenger hunt focused on outdoor sculpture, a campaign allowing students to send one another goodies and "heARTfelt" messages, a virtual Snowy Search challenge centered on the college's annual Winter Carnival weekend, a paint night where students recreated a painting from the Hood Museum's collection, and the development of shareable career resources aimed at students interested in the arts industry.
Each term, one group worked on developing another installment of the Alumni in the Arts webinar series. These student-moderated panel discussions would bring together two alumni working in the arts to share both career advice and industry insights with the audience. Speakers included: Brooke Minto '01, executive director of the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums and managing director at Advisory Board for the Arts; Michael Klein '14, head of art market research and analytics at Sotheby's; Mateo Romero '89, Pueblo painter and Dubin Fellow; Medill Harvey '90, associate curator of American decorative arts and manager of the Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Karin Bravin '86, owner of BravinLee Programs; and Hugh Freund '67, of counsel at Patterson Belknap.
ABOVE The logo for the intern podcast "Art in the Making."
This year's internship was fully remote, from hiring through project presentations. Only at a final farewell celebration did students and staff meet in person. That said, interns created a wide range of projects digitally, from Virtual Space for Dialogues (VSFDs) to innovative student programs.
Claudia Bernstein '21, Class of 1954 Intern, worked in the museum's contemporary photography collection. Through collections exploration and targeted research, she created her Virtual Space for Dialogue, Overexposure: Photography and the Nude, which focused on work from the mid-twentieth through the early twenty-first centuries by artists as diverse as Robert Mapplethorpe, Carrie Mae Weems, and Francesca Woodman.
Aidan Chisholm '21, Conroy Intern, worked with Jessica Hong, associate curator of global contemporary art, and John Stomberg doing curatorial research on contemporary work, including photography in the collection. Her Virtual Space for Dialogue, Out of Body, explored the conceptual complexities of body art using examples from Sonia Landy Sheridan, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, and Rebecca Belmore, among others. Reflecting on her internship, Chisholm writes, "Serving as a Conroy Intern has been a deeply formative experience. The internship afforded invaluable insight into the inner workings of the museum world at a particularly weighty moment as I consider the trajectory of my career in the art world."
Programming interns Caroline Cook '21, Erbe Intern, and Courtney McKee '21, Conroy Intern, chose to collaborate on a complicated engagement project for virtual audiences: a podcast that took two terms to create. They designed, wrote, produced, and edited an eight-part podcast called Art in the Making, which explored materiality and artistic processes intended for students new to talking about art. They had listeners in five countries. They also produced a Trivia Night contest, held a virtual art-making workshop with the Dartmouth Alliance for Children of Color, and held an art-making workshop for students called Deconstructing Nature: Form and Color, which combined discussions about art and experimenting with making art materials from plants and flowers. They also worked on independent Virtual Space for Dialogue projects. Cook's is titled In a Gallery, Out of Context: Ancient Art and Academia, and McKee's is The Craft of Activism: Materialism, Collective Action, and the Subversive Power of Creation.
Halle Dantas '21, Levinson Intern, supported campus engagement efforts throughout the past year. She helped oversee the Museum Club program, planning and leading weekly meetings for all three terms. Additionally, she was cochair of three different committee groups within Museum Club. In the spring, she cochaired the Club Programming committee, which organized activities and guest speakers for the club. In the winter, she cochaired the Digital Content committee, which developed a digital scavenger hunt that could be played by students on and off campus. In the spring, she cochaired the Alumni in the Arts committee and moderated a panel featuring two alumni who currently work in the art world. Dantas also helped promote museum events and opportunities including Tiny Tours, which kept the museum connected to students and campus this past year. Her Virtual Space for Dialogue exhibition, titled No Place like Home, explores how artists render and manipulate architectural form to portray different conceptions of home.
William Hadley Detrick '22, Erbe Intern, researched ten Haitian paintings that the museum had recently acquired. As part of this process, he took the initiative to interview the artist Levoy Exil by phone, gaining insight into Exil's use of loas (Haitian spirits) as subjects. Detrick also curated his Virtual Space for Dialogue, titled What Are Rites of Passage? Using a diverse selection of works, from a Lakota Sioux tipi liner to a Russian photograph of a Chinese bride and groom, he explored three distinct topics: Youth: Education and Discovery; Marriage and Parenting; and Death: Loss and Reflection.
Dylan Diloretto '21, Conroy Intern, was given a challenging task: to convert a vernacular photography exhibition curated by an art history class into an online exhibition that was both innovative and retained the students' core curatorial vision. He came up with a fascinating concept in which viewers can explore the students' show in two virtual environments: a typical white-box gallery and a cozy house. Toggling between the two invites questions about the role and presentation of vernacular photography while preserving the students' thematic groupings and text. Diloretto also had Professor Katie Hornstein and several of the students record their remarks on the works, adding an audio element to the site. He was assisted in this programming work by Noah Mushkin '21.
Mahealani DuPont '21, Levinson Intern, organized the IndigiNerd event during Winter Carnival that was cosponsored by the museum and Hokupa'a. She also compiled a report of contemporary Pacifika artists for possible acquisitions.
Tia Folgheraiter '21, Homma Family Intern, researched works in the collections at the intersection of indigeneity and ecocriticism. She conducted interviews with Cara Romero and Will Wilson, among others. This research contributed important contextual information for the museum and also informed her senior thesis.
Analicia Gonzales '21, Conroy Intern, worked on the museum's photography collection, focusing on work by Native American artists. This led directly to her Virtual Space for Dialogue, Contemporary Indigenous Photography and Self-Determination, which looked at work by artists such as Will Wilson, Kali Spitzer, and Maria Hupfield.
Diana Niles '21, Homma Family Intern, worked on Museum Collecting 101, with a theme of Latino/Latinx art. She researched artists, contacted galleries, created PowerPoint presentations, and assisted with the class sessions. She arranged for a gallerist from Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino to meet the class over Zoom and answer questions about how the gallery operates. The class was lively and engaged due in large part to her contributions.
Sophie Kamhi '21, Class of 1954 Intern, researched and wrote curatorial reports for a range of artists including Atta Kim, Lisandra Ramirez, Ying Li, Mark Taylor, Larry Colwell, Ezio Quiresi, and Eduardo Yanes Hidalgo while working with Jessica Hong and John Stomberg. She also developed her Virtual Space for Dialogue, The Rise of Icarus: The Resurgence of the Fall of Icarus as a Modern Myth, which considers prevalent themes in works of art centered on that myth.
Katelyn Zeser '22, Homma Family Intern, worked with the museum's Middle Eastern collection. A student of Arabic, she diligently fixed translation and transliteration problems in our database, including items from nearly every country in the MENA region, such as Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Palestine. Her year culminated with the creation of a best practices guide allowing both Arabic and non-Arabic speakers to more accurately add information about Arabic objects to the museum's database (TMS). Zeser also researched and wrote on objects in the collection by MENA artists including Shirin Neshat and Layla Essaydi.
Zeser writes, "Although I was quite far from the Hood Museum for most of the last year, I felt connected to the institution in a way that I did not think was possible. The people and the rewarding work allowed me to learn what I liked and what I didn't in the professional setting. These projects affirmed my love of museums and asked me hard questions of how equity needs to be improved in such spaces. But most of all, my internship at the Hood allowed me to realize that I don't just care about anthropology—I care about people and teaching, and I will always appreciate the Hood Museum for being so adept at loving both." Read more about Katelyn's work on Meanwhile at the Museum.
In general, virtual public programs foregrounded initiatives that support diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI) goals. In aggregate, programs presented a range of ideas, artistic voices, and practices across many cultures. Hallmarks from this year include a deeper commitment to accessibility, development of wider audiences through technology, and collaborations with community partners that yielded successful programs. Programs that meet DEAI goals are now tagged for record-keeping purposes to ensure that we meet annual goals.
The museum implemented new accessibility standards, using autogenerated captions and standardized title slides for presentations. Live captioning proved successful in trial programs and will be offered for all major lectures and symposia in the future. At the request of a parent, staff coordinated closely with an ASL interpreter to fully include a young hearing-impaired child in an interactive children's workshop. Most public programs remain permanently accessible on the Hood Museum's YouTube channel, with edited captions available.
Several branded programs cultivated new audiences and enriched program content through planning partnerships. The museum collaborated with author Joni Cole to produce the Expressive Writing workshop series, now offered twice a term due to consistent over-enrollment. The Art after Dark team partnered with a local culinary learning center to cocreate an experience that combined exploring food themes within the Hood Museum's collections and learning how to make a charcuterie board. Similarly, the Maker Night programming team collaborated with a local florist to teach concepts of floral arrangement through conversation about art. In a year of remote engagement, it was important to reinstate the Mindfulness in the Museum program on Zoom, in partnership with the Dartmouth Mindfulness Practice.
The year featured several Conversations and Connections, an ongoing series pairing curators, educators, faculty, artists, or scholars in informal discussions. Programs ranged from a mother and daughter discussing artistic practice as Indigenous artists, how their relationship to place informs that practice, and the transfer of intergenerational knowledge; to a conversation about eighteenth-century visual satire and its connection to satire today; to a panel that delved into the history and significance of a collection of Hollywood photographs, to name a few. Other gallery talks included reflecting on works by Black artists and the specific relationships between Blackness and language; exploring narratives in Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith's painting Trade Canoe: Forty Days and Forty Nights; and discussing themes of innovation and resilience.
Panels presented other opportunities for collaboration. One panel focused on Indigenous knowledge sharing around issues of the environment, relationality, resource management, intergenerational knowledge, and art making in correlation to artist Courtney M. Leonard's site-specific installation BREACH: Logbook 20 / NEBULOUS. In addition, the Hood Museum initiated a significant cross-institutional collaboration with the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, that brought together artists from around the world to reflect on the impacts of the pandemic on global curatorial practices. Another panel brought together digital platform specialists and a professor of new media to share best practices for taking advantage of digital resources for remote engagement.
The annual Manton Foundation Orozco lecture featured Professor Jennifer Jolly, Department of Art History, Ithaca College. She examined artist David Alfaro Siquerios's work during the 1930s and considered how works of art might affect viewers to political ends. As a new feature of public lectures, a current Dartmouth student introduced the program.
Campus public art inspired two new virtual programs: the Virtual Spotlight series and Escape to the Outdoors. Each Virtual Spotlight series introduced a single sculpture followed by an extended Q&A with a special guest. This year focused on Beverly Pepper's Thel and Ursula von Rydingsvard's Wide Babelki Bowl and provided short, insightful discussions on conservation practices for outdoor sculpture and artistic process, respectively. Public sculpture inspired play, as well. Staff created Escape to the Outdoors, a fully digital escape room–style game featuring public art. On their own or in groups, players work through a series of challenges, including puzzles, riddles, and hidden codes related to art on campus.
Student interns presented their curatorial work in A Space for Dialogue gallery talks on Zoom. Attendance soared, allowing friends and family to join from across the globe. Based on this success, future A Space for Dialogue presentations will be livestreamed on the museum's Facebook page when they are held in person. An additional intern program featured past and current interns in a Zoom roundtable discussion.
Another student program that garnered public attendance was the second annual Indigenous People's Day Fashion Show, cosponsored by Native Americans at Dartmouth, Hokupa'a, Native American Program, and the Hood Museum of Art. This creative virtual program featured video entries and included a special face mask competition. This was the first program the Hood Museum streamed live to Facebook.
July 8
Virtual Conversation | School Photos: Why They Matter in Times of Crisis
In this online conversation, Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer, guest curators, and Amelia Kahl discussed their recent exhibition School Photos and Their Afterlives, highlighting the ubiquity of class photos across the globe and their importance in moments of crisis. Argentine artist Marcelo Brodsky, whose image The Class was featured in the exhibition, joined the conversation to describe his work with school photos in the pursuit of solidarity and social justice.
July 15
A Closer Look | Trade Canoe: Forty Days and Forty Nights
An exploration of Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith's painting Trade Canoe: Forty Days and Forty Nights with Jami Powell and Neely McNulty.
July 22
Virtual Gallery Talk | The Embodiment of Language
Morgan E. Freeman, DAMLI Native American Art Fellow, and Thomas Price, curatorial assistant, revisited an earlier program based on the exhibition of the same name. Cocurators Freeman and Price drew upon Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy as an orator to reflect on works by Black artists and the specific relationships between Blackness and language.
July 23
Virtual Adult Workshop | Expressive Writing
This workshop fused explorations of works of art with fun and meaningful expressive writing exercises. Facilitated by Hood education staff and author Joni B. Cole, founder of the Writer's Center of White River Junction.
July 28
Virtual Dartmouth | Perspectives Group Tour
Perspectives: Dementia Engagement for Care Partners and Loved Ones through Art offers an intergenerational opportunity for individuals with dementia, their care partners and students to visit the world-class works that are currently featured at the Hood Museum. Looking at art is an activity that can be especially enjoyable and beneficial to those with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. Art viewing utilizes areas of the brain unaffected by the disease; it can stimulate thoughts, reactions, and emotions with minimal reliance on recent memory.
August 6
Customized Engagement | Cedar Hills Living Facility—Docent Led
August 14
Virtual Mindfulness in the Museum
Led by Dartmouth's Mindfulness Practice Group, we took some time with Francois Gignoux's painting New Hampshire (White Mountain Landscape).
August 19
Virtual Gallery Talk | The Curated Campus: Art and Environment
John R. Stomberg discussed how we think about placing public art so we have synchronicity between the ideas embodied in the art and the activities going on in different parts of campus.
August 25
Virtual Dartmouth Perspectives Tour—Docent Led
August 27
Customized Engagement | Valley Terrace Tour—Docent Led
September 16
Virtual Conversation | Innovation and Resilience: What We Learn from Artists
John R. Stomberg and Vivian Ladd introduced three artists whose innovative work began with a problem. Colleagues for over 30 years, Stomberg and Ladd shared some of the personal and professional benefits gained from thinking like an artist and the ways in which creativity, roadblocks, and improvisation were hallmarks of the newly expanded Hood Museum of Art's first year of installations in 2019.
September 21
Virtual Student Panel Discussion | How to Get Involved with the Museum
Three students—Analicia Gonzales '21, Devon Mifflin '21, and Halle Dantas '21—spoke about the various ways to get involved with the Hood Museum through events, clubs, programs, and more. Moderated by Isadora Italia and Amelia Kahl.
September 22
Virtual Dartmouth Perspectives Tour—Docent Led
September 24
Customized Engagement | Woodlands Living Facility Tour—Docent Led
October 2
Virtual Dr. Allen W. Root Contemporary Art Distinguished Lectureship
In recent years, museums have been publicly confronted with their colonial legacies and exclusionary practices. In this unprecedented era of COVID-19, in tandem with mass protests and upheavals initiated by the #BlackLivesMatter movement for racial equity, social justice, and systemic change, these conversations have come to the fore with even more prominence within and around institutional spaces. This year's Dr. Allen W. Root Contemporary Art Distinguished Lectureship focused on different curatorial models and how we can rethink institutional practices for long-term change.
October 21
Virtual Panel Discussion | Centering Indigenous Knowledges in a "Nebulous" Moment
The exhibition Form and Relation: Contemporary Native Ceramics at the Hood Museum raised important questions with which communities across the globe are grappling: How can we shift our understanding of the land from one of ownership and extraction to one of relationality? How do we move toward a recognition of our shared humanity? How do we create a world in which future generations can thrive? Using these framing questions and artist Courtney M. Leonard's site-specific installation BREACH: Logbook 20 | NEBULOUS as starting points, the panelists considered the complexities of our current moment and the myriad entanglements and impositions that impact our lives and futures. Grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing, each of the panelists provided a unique perspective on issues of the environment, relationality, resource management, intergenerational knowledge, and art making.
October 27
Virtual Dartmouth Perspectives Tour—Docent Led
October 28
Customized Engagement | Woodlands Living Facility Tour—Docent Led
October 28, 30
Virtual Storytime in the Galleries | Halloween!
Visitors in costume joined Museum Educator Jamie Rosenfeld for a virtual Halloween Storytime in the Galleries. Using Zoom, families listened to stories, looked at art together, and engaged in hands-on activities inspired by art from cultures around the world!
October 29
Virtual Art after Dark | Escape Room
November 2
Facilitated Experience | Escape to the Outdoors with the Dartmouth Office of Accessibility
November 5
Virtual Adult Workshop | Expressive Writing Workshop
November 6
Virtual Second Annual Indigenous Peoples' Month Fashion Show
November 10
Virtual Panel Discussion | Alumni in the Arts
November 12
Virtual Adult Workshop | Maker's Night: Working with Found Objects
Taking inspiration from collage and assemblage art in the Hood Museum's collection, participants made art together from what each had on hand at home.
November 24
Virtual Dartmouth Perspectives Group Tour
January 7, 8, 9
Virtual Storytime in the Galleries | Portraits!
January 13
Virtual Spotlight on Public Art at Dartmouth: Thel by Beverly Pepper
January 21
Virtual Conversations and Connections | Used to be Different, Now It's the Same?
It's become a commonplace to hear that 2020 has forever changed the art world, and cultural heritage in general. But this is a story we've heard before. During the dot-com boom of the early 2000s, museums like the Guggenheim, Whitney, and SFMoMA made a leap to digital collections and programming, though many later retreated to habitual practices that were less adventurous. What lessons can be learned from the digital gold rush of the turn of the millennium, and how should museums apportion resources strained under the pandemic to take advantage of this latest transition?
January 26
Virtual Dartmouth Perspectives Group Tour
January 28
Customized Engagement | Woodlands Living Facility Tour—Docent Led
January 28
Virtual Adult Workshop | Expressive Writing Workshop
February 10
Virtual Tour | Women's Club of Boston Tour
February 10
Virtual Space for Dialogue | When Art Intersects History
February 18
Virtual Art After Dark | Feast Your Eyes
February 23
Virtual Dartmouth Perspectives Group Tours
February 25
Customized Engagement | Woodlands Living Facility Tour—Docent Led
February 25
Virtual Conversation and Connections | Intergenerational Knowledge: Relationships to Place and Practice
Morgan E. Freeman, cocurator of Form and Relation: Contemporary Native Ceramics, in conversation with artists Roxanne Swentzell and Rose B. Simpson. In addition to discussing their collaborative work Timeline Necklace, the artists discussed their artistic practices, relationships to land, and practices of intergenerational knowledge transfer.
March 2
Virtual Alumni in the Arts | Creating and Curating
The Museum Club hosted an Alumni in the Arts panel discussion featuring Mateo Romero '89, Pueblo painter and Dubin Fellow, and Medill Harvey '90, associate curator of American decorative arts and manager of the Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who spoke about their work and how their time at Dartmouth influenced their career paths.
March 4
Virtual Panel Discussion | All the World's Future: Global Art and the Art History in the Wake of COVID-19
Professors Sean Lowry, Head of Critical and Theoretical Studies in Art, Victorian College of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts & Music, University of Melbourne; and Simone Douglas, Director of the MFA Fine Arts, School of Art, Media, and Technology, Parsons School of Design, The New School; together they lead Project Anywhere.
March 11
Virtual Adult Workshop | Maker Night: Hard-Edged Abstraction
Taking inspiration from the Hood Museum's collection, participants made art together with what they had on hand at home.
March 19
Facilitated Experience | Virtual Dartmouth Hitchcock Learning to Look—Docent Led
April 2, 16
Facilitated Experience | Virtual Dartmouth Hitchcock Learning to Look—Docent Led
April 6
Customized Engagement | Virtual Undergraduate Advising and Research Team Experience
April 9
Virtual Space for Dialogue Gallery Talk | The Soul Has Bandaged Moments
April 15
Virtual Adult Workshop | Maker Night: Art in Bloom
Participants explored how artists across the Hood Museum collection use flowers to create stunning compositions or express ideas. Michael Reed of Robert's Flowers joined our conversation and teach the basics of flower arranging to inspire some at-home experimentation.
April 21
Virtual Conversations and Connections | Technology and Kinship
Artist Ruben Olguin and Eastman Post-Doctoral Fellow Michelle Lee Brown discussed issues of ancestral technology, making kin with machines, and imagining Indigenous futures. Moderated by Jami Powell, the conversation also featured Olguin's work on view in the Hood Museum exhibition Form and Relation: Contemporary Native Ceramics.
April 27
Virtual Dartmouth Perspectives Tour—Docent Led
April 29
Virtual Public Manton Foundation Annual Orozco Lecture | The Aesthetics of Conflict: David Alfaro Siqueiros and the 1930s
Jennifer Jolly, Department of Art History, Ithaca College
Jolly examined Siqueiros's application of the principles of dialectical materialism to artistic production, aesthetics, and reception during the 1930s.
May 5
Virtual Spotlight on Public Art at Dartmouth | Wide Babelki Bowl by Ursula Von Rydinsvard
May 6
Virtual Adult Workshop | Expressive Writing
May 7
Facilitated Experience | Virtual Dartmouth Hitchcock Learning to Look—Docent Led
May 10, 24, 25
Facilitated Experiences: Woodstock Terrace Senior Living Facility
May 12
Virtual Space for Dialogue Roundtable | Creative Curating in a Digital Time
Challenged with developing online exhibitions this past year, Hood Museum interns presented a candid discussion of the challenges and creative solutions involved in virtual curation—from concept and research to website design and public talks.
May 13
Virtual Adult Workshop | Expressive Writing
May 19
Conversations and Connections | Shooting Stars: Hollywood Photography from the John Kobal Foundation Collection
May 21
Virtual Alumni in the Arts: Analyzing and Advising
The Museum Club hosted this panel discussion featuring Brooke Minto '01, executive director of the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums, and managing director at Advisory Board for the Arts; and Michael Klein '14, head of art market research and analytics at Sotheby's, who spoke about their work and how their time at Dartmouth influenced their career paths.
May 21
Facilitated Experience | Virtual Dartmouth Hitchcock Learning to Look—Docent Led
May 25
Virtual Dartmouth Perspectives Tour—Docent Led
June 2
Virtual Space for Dialogue | The Butt of the Joke: Humor and the Human Body
June 3, 4, 5
Virtual Storytime in the Galleries | Art and Nature
June 4, 18
Facilitated Experiences | Virtual Dartmouth Hitchcock Learning to Look—Docent Led
June 23
Virtual Gallery Talk | Landscape(d): Modern Photography and the Environment
In this talk, exhibition curator John Stomberg examined the photograph's role in exploring the often uneasy relationship between humans and the lands they inhabit.
June 24
Art after Dark | Escape Room
June 30
Virtual Conversation and Connections | Satirical Slights: Legacies of British Caricature
Former Barbara C. and Harvey P. Hood 1918 Curator of Academic Programming Kathy Hart and Dartmouth Senior Lecturer in Art History Kristin O'Rourke highlighted eighteenth-century visual satires by William Hogarth, Thomas Rowlandson, and James Gillray and talked about their influence on visual satire today.
July 31
Virtual Hanover High School Art Department Tour
Vivian Ladd led a virtual Learning to Look lesson focusing on the figure for the Hanover High School art department. This taped experience was the first of four asynchronous recorded lessons featuring the figure in a variety of media.
August 6
Customized Engagement | Global Campuses Foundation Tour—Docent Led
October 1
Customized Engagement | Hanover High School
October 1
Customized Engagement | Bellows Falls High School
October 20
Facilitated Experience | Virtual Castleton College—Decolonizing History through Art
October 22
Facilitated Experience | Oxbow High School
October 27
Facilitated Experience | Kimball Union Academy
October 28
Facilitated Experience | Montpelier High School
November 5
Virtual Educator Happy Hour
This monthly program is designed as a respite and recharge for teachers. Every month the program features selected works from the Hood Museum of Art's collection.
November 19
Customized Engagement | Global Campuses Foundation—Docent Led
December 1
Customized Engagement | Richmond Middle School
December 1
Customized Engagement | Rutland Middle School
December 3
Virtual Educator Happy Hour
December 7
Customized Engagement | Global Campuses Foundation—Docent Led
December 11
Customized Engagement | WISE Group Experience
January 7
Virtual Educator Happy Hour
February 17
Customized Engagement | Montshire Museum Collaboration: Ingenious, Indigenous Technology
Participants explored objects from the Hood Museum of Art to discover the science and artistry embedded in Indigenous technology.
February 18
Facilitated Experience | Kimball Union Academy
March 15
Facilitated Experience | Lyme Middle School
March 29
Customized Engagement | Orange East Supervisory Union
April 1
Customized Engagement | Orange East Supervisory Union
April 1
Virtual Educator Happy Hour | Decolonizing the Curriculum through Art
May 12
2021/2022 Teacher Preview
A preview of upcoming exhibitions, live and virtual tour topics, and teacher workshops planned for next school year. Museum educators presented an overview of the year's offerings and provided opportunities to engage with selected works of art featured in upcoming exhibitions.
May 14
Facilitated Experience | Kimball Union Academy
June 24
Virtual Escape to the Outdoors | NEMA Workshop
LEFT Lebanon Middle School's 5th grade Images class's art inspired by Laetitia Soulier.
