Exhibitions Archive

The art of Melanesia is a particular strength of the Hood Museum of Art's collection, and the museum's primary holdings are from the island of New Guinea in the southwestern Pacific. The objects in this gallery offer a window into the region's traditional religions, people's ideas about the supernatural world, and the social relationships of people living within the traditional societies located in the Sepik River region and Abelam Hills in the northern part of the island.

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This exhibition highlights the extraordinary Owen and Wagner Collection at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, through its display of more than one hundred works of contemporary Indigenous art from Australia. These objects are by artists from outback communities as well as major metropolitan centers and span five decades of creative activity. They also represent the many art-making practices of Aboriginal peoples across the Australian continent, including acrylic paintings on linen and canvas, earthen ochre paintings on bark, board, and canvas, and sculpture in a variety of media. While the exhibition features many influential artists who have contributed to the development of an Indigenous art canon since the 1970s, the focus is squarely on subsequent generations of artists, who are breathing new life into ancient stories and broadening the possibilities of Indigenous art. The exhibition therefore also includes contemporary paintings that recall the ancestral narratives of the Dreaming as well as photographs from urban-based artists who depict the contemporary realities of Indigenous people from Australia. Resonant with cultural memory, these objects reference and reinvigorate customary iconographies, speak to the history and legacy of colonization, and affirm Robert Hughes's statement that Aboriginal art is "the last great art movement of the twentieth century."

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This installation features seven works of art which touch upon moments of feminine metamorphosis. In them, women are agents of change: they cause change and/or are changed themselves. Through these works, the unique relationship between the feminine and transformation becomes clear, and metamorphosis in turn becomes an act that can emancipate women from the confines of their traditional gender roles, to one degree or another.

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The works of art in this exhibition are all abstracted depictions of landscapes from an aerial perspective, a point of view that draws us into the work through an intensified experience of the entire composition. They all share the same basic focus, evoking some geographical construct or another, and a sense of place. While they have a visually abstract quality, this does not mean that we become lost. Rather, the means through which the artists masterfully render their subjects (including line, color, light, shadow, volume, and depth) encourage us to take an active role in these works’ realization. They ground us, ironically, as we examine them from every angle, following the symphony of marks along the surface and subconsciously constructing the imagined landscape both within and beyond the edges of the frame.

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The first-ever exhibition of its kind in the United States, Dreaming Their Way features intensely colorful canvases and intricate bark paintings by thirty-three Indigenous female artists from across the Australian continent. The paintings demonstrate these women's bold and often experimental interpretations of their cultural heritage. Works from renowned artists such as Dorothy Napangardi and the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye express the Indigenous relationship to the land, understanding of the world, and sense of obligation to their culture. Collectively, these works will encourage visitors to view contemporary Australian Indigenous art as one of the great art movements of our time.

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Coaxing the Spirits to Dance is first major exhibition about the art of the Papuan Gulf in over forty years. This exhibition will explore the relationship between social life and artistic expression since the nineteenth century in one of the most important art-producing regions of Papua New Guinea. It includes one hundred magnificent art objects from the Hood’s own important collection of Melanesian art, including the Franklin Family Collection, and select other public and private collections. The exhibition features ancestor boards, masks, drums, skull racks, and personal items. It will examine the effects of colonialism on artistic production, the variation of styles among differing social structures and cultural practices, and the relationship between patterns of collecting and interpretations of art and culture in the Papuan Gulf. A fully illustrated scholarly catalogue accompanies the exhibition. Coaxing the Spirits to Dance will travel to The Metropolitan Museum of Art from October 24, 2006, through December 2, 2007.

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