Over the past five years, the Hood Museum of Art and Dartmouth worked together with Tod Williams and Billie Tsien to imagine new spaces, and with Abbott Miller and Pentagram to imagine a brand that represents both the Hood Museum's purpose and its new building. This past year saw the realization of that brand, coupled with a renewed and expanded vision for the museum's external relations strategy and focus. In addition to a comprehensive rebrand extending from the museum's façade to the launch of a newly designed and organized website and Hood Quarterly, the team engaged with media strategists Fitz and Co. to develop national and international press relationships and place stories online and in print about the museum and its reopening.

As part of the strategic plan informing (and informed by) its facility expansion and rebranding, the museum redrew its external relations map, complementing the existing public relations and events/programs coordinators with coordinators of campus engagement and visitor services. The campus engagement coordinator renews our commitment to the undergraduate student body writ large—and to the museum's purchase upon the "Dartmouth experience"—by offering students a familiar face both where they are on campus and when they visit us. In particular, this position reaches out to undergraduate advisors, leaders, and influencers; student affinity groups, clubs, and houses or teams; and potential campus allies in student engagement, such as admissions and alumni relations. The visitor services coordinator stewards the museum's front-of-house visitor-oriented operations, in concert with eight full-time visitor service guides.

Together, these external relations efforts are geared toward one aim: to invite our visitors, wherever they may be, to engage with the museum and its extraordinary collections in ways that are meaningful to them. The rest of this section reviews the publications, public relations, and visitor services highlights from the past year.