Hood Quarterly, spring 2025
José Clemente Orozco's The Epic of American Civilization, painted between 1932 and 1934, is one of Dartmouth's most renowned works and greatest artistic educational resources, and its designation as a National Historic Landmark in 2013 was a significant milestone in the history of Dartmouth and the Hood Museum's collection. This mural cycle has clearly withstood the test of time, its meaning and impact ever evolving to engage each new generation of learners. Painted long before the official opening of the Hood Museum in 1985, The Epic of American Civilization continues to challenge us to ask difficult questions and advance learning, care, and connections through the reach and relevance of visual art and material culture. The statements that follow, from the Hood Museum's curator of education and a Dartmouth professor, demonstrate the murals' impact on campus and in the community.
NEELY MCNULTY, Hood Foundation Curator of Education
What makes a work of art exceptional for teaching? Versatility, surprise, and relevance are all part of the equation.
Since the Hood Museum began its school and community programs in the 1980s, thousands of area middle and high school students, adult learners, and, more recently, business and medical students have engaged with Orozco's The Epic of American Civilization. Groups request it more than any other work of art, and it inspires the widest range of conversations. At the close of each tour, all our Orozco groups leave with a sense of the whole as well as the mural cycle's major components and themes. Each group, however, comes to its tour with different objectives that we can address through focused conversations. Our youngest students can talk about the perils of conformity in society and in the classroom, while our high school students can discuss why teaching histories from an Indigenous perspective is essential. Art students can explore Orozco's formal innovations—how he uses scale, composition, palette, and thematic repetition to communicate complicated ideas within the architectural limitations of the reading room. For years, we have led Geisel students through close-looking exercises to draw parallels between reading the mural and thinking diagnostically. And more recently, classes of Tuck executive education participants have used the mural themes as a catalyst for personal reflection on their leadership style within their organizations.
This commanding, sprawling work inspires creative teaching and remains provocative and relevant nearly a hundred years after its completion. Happily, it always surprises.
MARY K. COFFEY, Professor of Art History and Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies
I came to Dartmouth College twenty years ago as a specialist in Mexican muralism. I joke that José Clemente Orozco got me my job. Working with the Hood Museum of Art and other campus entities, I have helped develop educational materials about Orozco's The Epic of American Civilization (1932–34) to better publicize this invaluable campus asset. We have produced online resources that allow viewers around the world to explore the mural virtually and on-site resources in both English and Spanish. I have published a book about the mural, Orozco's American Epic: Myth, History, and the Melancholy of Race (Duke University Press, 2020) that represents a culmination of my years of teaching and researching at Dartmouth. In addition to touring hundreds of students through the murals, I have also spoken with countless alumni who are eager to reminisce and reflect on the impact of the mural on their lives.
As a scholar of public art, I am interested in the history of the mural's reception over time. From the College's archives, I learned about the xenophobic reaction against the commission in the 1930s and periodic calls for the mural's removal in the intervening years. I was surprised and delighted to learn of President Ernest Hopkins's (1916–45) robust and good-humored defense of the mural as well as institutions of higher education, which he deemed the appropriate place to entertain controversial ideas like those Orozco painted across the library's walls. He argued that only time would determine the artistic merit of Orozco's mural and left it up to future generations to decide if the commission had been foresight or folly.
Today, the mural is valued not only as a great work of art and a source of pride for the institution but also as exemplary heritage. In 2013, The Epic of American Civilization became the first work of Mexican art to be nominated and only the second fresco to be designated a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. government. When a National Park Ranger came to Dartmouth for its dedication, I felt as though President Hopkins's question about its meaning had been answered for posterity. However, reception is never static as contexts change and the political winds shift.
Over the past twenty years, my understanding of the mural has evolved. Originally, I viewed it as a historical work of art that offers viewers a window onto the past when a global depression, the rise of fascism, and xenophobic racism threatened hemispheric relations. Increasingly, students and visitors comment on the relevance of Orozco's message for our time as we confront rising hostility toward immigrants, the criminalization of campus speech, and calls for defunding the humanities. Orozco's mural testifies to the value of humanistic inquiry and its commitment to questioning the authority of the present, critically scrutinizing the past, and imagining more just futures. While audiences will find no answers in the Epic, the difficult questions it poses about American civilization persist. As always, the burden of interpretation is ours.
The Orozco Room was made possible by the Manton Foundation, whose generosity provides perpetual support for the preservation, understanding, and awareness of the Orozco mural.