Dolls, Boston

Label

The sense of nostalgia is particularly poignant in these two works by Olivia Parker and Marie Cosindas. The photographers’ focus invites us to linger over every detail: the weave of the fabrics or the paint chipping off the face. Parker’s choice of black and white and Cosindas’s rich, warm tones suggest that these dolls belong to the past, played with by children who grew up long ago, and now stored as keepsakes and vessels of memory. However, there is also something unsettling in the abandonment of objects that were created to be loved. Raised in the Upper Valley, Parker recalled: When I was ten, my favorite place at Dartmouth was the basement of Wilson Hall. Box after box of bones of eohippus and other long gone creatures were there for me to see and touch. These objects had an existence beyond the moment of our encounter. I learned then that an object can have many transformations, from life to bone and shell, to rock, and to shadow. . . . I also understood that objects can change by touching imagination.

From the 2019 exhibition All Dolled Up, curated by Amelia Kahl, Barbara C. & Harvery P. Hood 1918 Curator of Academic Programming

Course History

WRIT 5, Expository Writing, William Craig, Winter 2014

Exhibition History

Acquisitions 1974-1978, Jaffe-Friede, Strauss and Barrows Galleries, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 8, 1978-January 21, 1979.

All Dolled Up, Alvin P. Gutman Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, May 11-August 11, 2019.

American Photography: 1850-1980, Barrows and Lower Jewett Corridor, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 26-May 20,1982.

Hopkins Center 25th Anniversary Exhibition: Artists-In-Residence at Dartmouth, Jaffe-Friede Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 12-May 22, 1988.

Image and Gender, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 17-May 27, 1990.

In Residence: Contemporary Art at Dartmouth, William B. Jaffe and Evelyn A. Jaffe Hall Gallereis, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 18-July 6, 2014.

Looking Backward, Moving Forward: Women Photographers at the Hood Museum of Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 12-September 19, 2004.

Publication History

Michael R. Taylor and Gerald Auten, In Residence: Contemporary Artists at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2013, ill. p. , no.

Provenance

The artist, Boston, Massachusetts; sold to present collection, 1978.

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