Past Exhibitions
Separation Perfected
Inspired by theorist Guy Debord's 1967 book Society of the Spectacle, the exhibition Separation Perfected examines the paradox of our hyper-connected yet isolating world. In particular, it traces the shift from physical spaces to digital realms, where mediated images have increasingly replaced genuine connections. Through works spanning from the Industrial Revolution to the digital age, the exhibition questions how technology and capitalism have transformed visibility into a commodity, promoting exposure over authentic interaction. By navigating these visual landscapes, Separation Perfected invites viewers to reflect on what may be lost in a world where connection is abundant, yet true presence remains elusive.
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.
Connection and Curatorial Practice
New Directions
In honor of the Hood Museum’s 40th anniversary, we present New Directions: Connection and Curatorial Practice, an exhibition that demonstrates the values that shape our curatorial approach. Around a signature new acquisition, Diedrick Brackens’s infernal garden, we have installed art from disparate times and cultures. Though seemingly quite different, each of these surrounding works relates to Brackens’s art, whether by virtue of weaving technique and color choice or environmental concerns and religious iconography.
Visual Kinship
Visual Kinship explores how photography defines, challenges, and reimagines the concept of family. Across diverse historical and contemporary works, the exhibition examines how images reflect and disrupt family structures shaped by colonialism, migration, transnational adoption, and queer intimacies. Photography plays a pivotal role in bridging the personal and political, offering a lens through which kinship can be recognized, claimed, and contested. The exhibition also considers how visual culture fosters alternative networks of belonging and care, expanding the notion of family beyond biological or traditional frameworks.
Art History Now
Methods and Materials
Every generation remakes art history. As students brush off dusty analytical tools and reanimate enduring cultural questions, the discipline acquires new urgency—and new relevance. This teaching exhibition, mounted in conjunction with an advanced seminar for departmental majors offered in fall 2025, invites students to rethink the methods and materials of their scholarly craft. Rarely shown and understudied, the objects gathered here represent "hidden gems" from the Hood Museum's collection. Together, these unfamiliar images and forms invite us to reflect on issues from racialization to migration. And they encourage us to reconsider art's canonical histories, to see across space and time. Can a contemporary Ethiopian photographic print unsettle our view of an 18th-century British painting? What does a 16th-century German engraving have in common with a modern Native American painting?
Art, Provenance, and the Nazi Era
Hidden HistoriesHidden Histories: Art, Provenance, and the Nazi Era provides insight into the Hood Museum's Nazi-era provenance research initiative. While the exhibited artworks span diverse time periods and media, they are united by significant gaps in their ownership histories as well as their connections to dealers who sold looted art. By examining these red flags in provenance, this exhibition draws upon the hidden stories behind each piece to explore the ethical complexities of art acquisition and stewardship.
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.
Non-Humans in East Asian Art
Attitude of CoexistenceIn East Asian art, non-human subjects such as deities, mythological beings, natural phenomena, animals, and everyday objects have long been represented with agency, coexisting alongside their human counterparts. Featuring objects from the Hood Museum’s East Asian art collection from past to present, Attitude of Coexistence explores how art offers an opportunity to experience this inclusive and collaborative attitude toward non-human subjects.