Coloring the Western Canon

June 25 – August 21, 2022

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Series

A Space for Dialogue 107

About

Color holds many negative associations as something that has been constructed in opposition to whiteness. Whereas whiteness tends to symbolize purity, beauty, and refinement, color often represents the dirty, exotic, and primitive. Coloring the Western Canon examines how our relationship to color has largely been shaped by Eurocentric concepts of art. By navigating the various ways nonwhite artists use color to explore their cultural identities, this exhibition challenges the boundaries of our whitewashed Western canon and asks you to reconsider how you think about color.

A Space for Dialogue is a student-curated exhibition program that began in 2001. Hood Museum of Art interns create an installation drawn from the museum’s permanent collection by engaging with every aspect of curation, from doing research and selecting objects, to choosing frames and a wall color, to planning a layout and writing labels and a brochure, to giving a public talk. There have been over 100 A Space for Dialogue exhibitions on a wide variety of themes.

A Space for Dialogue: Fresh Perspectives on the Permanent Collection from Dartmouth’s Students, founded with support from the Class of 1948, is made possible with generous endowments from the Class of 1967, Bonnie and Richard Reiss Jr. ’66, and Pamela J. Joyner '79.

Exhibition Curator

Chloe Jung

Related Publications

Exhibition subject: A Space for Dialogue