Past Exhibitions
Indigenous Solidarity Throughout Pasifika and Beyond
Across OceansAcross Oceans: Indigenous Solidarity Throughout Pasifika and Beyond provides a glimpse into a diversity of contemporary Indigenous art based largely in cultures connected to the Pacific Ocean. These works, whose origins range from Australia to Hawaiʻi to the west coast of the United States and Canada, are brought together to reveal possibilities for solidarity and empowerment rooted in community, continuity, and self-determination.
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.
Tracing Foodways through Art
From the Field
From the Field: Tracing Foodways through Art explores the idea of food as not only nourishment but also an expression of our lived and shared experiences. This exhibition invites audiences to reflect on their relationships to foodways, which encompass our attitudes, practices, and rituals around food. Artworks across different time periods, mediums, and cultures illustrate points of connection, disconnection, and reconnection to our foodways.
Indigenous Australian Art from the Kimberley and Central Desert
Layered Histories
The artists in Layered Histories deftly use color, pattern, and abstraction to create a sense of place that layers images of the land (known as Country) with creation stories, historical events, and significant animals, plants, and people. Unlike Western ideas of history which often draw a firm line between events of the past and the present, these Indigenous artists express more comprehensive and integrated world views.
Maḏayin is the result of a seven-year collaboration between the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection and Indigenous knowledge holders from the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre in northern Australia. It chronicles the rise of a globally significant art movement as told from the perspective of the Yolŋu. Maḏayin presents more than 90 iconic paintings on eucalyptus bark, inviting audiences across the US to discover this inspiring story of the sacred, the beautiful, and the power of art.
Abstracting Nature
Transcendent LandscapesTranscendent Landscapes: Abstracting Nature explores the environment as a subject in abstract art. Focusing on five monumental works by female painters, this exhibition studies the spiritual role landscapes play in painting and considers the way these works evoke metaphysical experiences for both the artist and the viewer.
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.
my life as a tunnel
Shannon Te Ao
Shannon Te Ao (Ngāti Tūwharetoa / New Zealander, born Australia, 1978) implements Māori traditions to explore the ambiguities and tensions within interpersonal relationships as well as the complex dynamics between Indigeneity, language, and loss. The starting point for my life as a tunnel (2018) is a scene from Charles Burnett’s iconic film Killer of Sheep (1978) in which the protagonist, Stan, and his wife—whose marriage has experienced much strain—slowly dance to the haunting Clyde Otis song "This Bitter Earth," originally recorded by Dinah Washington in 1959, capturing a pivotal moment of physical and psychological exchange between two individuals. This two-channel video is installed on two separate, back-to-back screens. Two male figures move intimately together to an a cappella version of "This Bitter Earth," translated into te reo Māori (Māori language). Their engagements seem affectionate, but there are subtle, yet palpable, moments of disquiet. This layered and poignant work weaves together past and present and asks: What can be found once something is lost?