JAMI POWELL, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Indigenous Art
Hood Quarterly, winter 2025
When I interviewed for my position at the Hood Museum in 2018, the committee asked me to select works by five artists I would propose to acquire for the museum's collections. One of the images I was
most excited to present was TV Indians (2017) by Chemehuevi photographer Cara Romero. Within this image, I explained to the committee, Romero reappropriates pop culture representations of Native peoples in the media and juxtaposes these images—displayed on a pyramid-shaped stack of "vintage" televisions—with the desert landscape of New Mexico in the background. Between the pyramid of televisions and the viewer stands a group of young Pueblo people partially obstructing the view of the screens and the landscape. I spoke about the potential for this photograph to further the Hood Museum's teaching mission for Dartmouth and K–12 audiences and discussed concepts of visual sovereignty and the connections between self-representation and self-determination. As I spoke, I noticed some chuckles and nodding from the committee, so when Director John Stomberg informed me that he had recently purchased TV Indians during a trip to Santa Fe, I was both relieved and excited about the opportunity to work with colleagues who also saw the great potential within Romero's photographic images.
In the years since, we have collected six additional photographs from Romero, including 17 Mile Road (2019), which references the iconic Beatles album cover for Abbey Road. In addition to her pop culture references, we also acquired two images from her series Water Memories, Water Memory (2015) and Oil Boom (2015), which reference environmental racism and the impacts of flooding on Indigenous homelands. Kaa (2017), which is one of many images from Romero that empowers Indigenous women through the visual narrative and composition of the photographic image, was added to the collection in 2019. Most recently, we acquired two works from her series exploring Indigenous futurisms, The Zenith (2022) and 3 Sisters (2022). These photographs speak to the importance of utilizing place-based and ancestral knowledges—or what Romero refers to as the "original instructions" we've received from our ancestors—for building strong futures for Native and non-Native peoples. Each of these images has been used in classes from multiple departments and several of the images have been on view in exhibitions. In fact, in the six years since the museum's reopening in 2019, at least one of Romero's works has been on view in the galleries at all times.
It is no coincidence that the opening of Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light) aligns with the beginning of the Hood Museum of Art's fortieth-anniversary year. In many ways, Romero's photographic practice serves as a visual representation of the Hood Museum's mission to center art and people in teaching and learning through inclusive and robust academic, cultural, and civic engagements with art and its histories. Moreover, partnering with Romero on this exhibition has led to even greater opportunities for Dartmouth students to learn from and even collaborate with her. Last June, Romero and Hood Museum staff worked together on a series of photographs featuring Kanaka Maoli students from Hōkūpa'a, Dartmouth's pan-Pasifika student organization. Working closely with Kaitlyn Anderson '24, the Conroy Intern, who recruited fellow graduating members of the organization Teani De Fries and Hope Ushiroda-Garma, as well as second-year student Amedée Conley-Kapoi '26, Romero created two new images for her First American Doll series. These photographs, as well as two new underwater photographs, will make their debut in the Hood Museum exhibition. This collaboration exemplifies what some at the College call the "Dartmouth difference" and demonstrates the museum's commitment to our students' deep engagement with living artists and Indigenous arts over the past four decades and in the decades to come.
This exhibition is organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, and generously supported by leadership gifts from Claire Foerster and Daniel S. Bernstein '87 and Thomas A. Russo '77 and Georgina T. Russo '77, and with support from the Charles Gilman Family Endowment and a gift from Karen Miller Nearburg and Charles Nearburg '72.
ON VIEW JANUARY 18–AUGUST 10, 2025
Following its presentation at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light) will travel to the Phoenix Art Museum in Phoenix, AZ, February 28–June 28, 2026, MOCA Jacksonville, October 1, 2026–March 21, 2027, among other venues to be announced.
EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
This exhibition catalogue, co-published by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, and Radius Books, will be released in the summer of 2025. It will feature contributions by notable scholars, including Suzan Shown Harjo (Mvskoke), former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo (Mvskoke), and Jordan Poorman Cocker (Kiowa and Tongan), Curator of Indigenous Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, among others.