Exhibitions Archive

Photographs that startle, disturb, and cause one to question are the subjects of this exhibition, which was organized by Virginia Beahan and Brian Miller, two professors who teach in Dartmouth College's Studio Art Department. Surveying the museum's collection, they selected both black-and-white and color photographs that push boundaries of medium and subject. Works in the exhibition span the second half of the twentieth century to the present day and include photographs by such artists as Fiona Foley, Tierney Gearon, Luis Gispert, Susan Meiselas, Gary Schneider, and Francesca Woodman.

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In Western culture, the color black is a code or symbol sometimes associated with depression, darkness, and despair. Some twentieth-century artists have gone beyond these preconceptions to imbue the color with very personal associations by manipulating the cultural significance of black using the principles of abstraction. The artists harness a range of tones, forms, lines, and edges to create a unique style and form of expression centered upon black. 

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The world today is an unequal place where individuals face stark differences in their access to resources, information, and power. The archaeological record suggests that such inequities have existed in various cultures throughout human history. This student-curated installation considers some of the challenges of interpreting and presenting material objects as they relate to inequality. Just as professional archaeologists have built their theories using both ancient artifacts and cultural materials from contemporary populations, the student curators have assembled a diverse collection to consider four domains in which archaeologists can see inequality created, reproduced, and challenged in ancient societies. The central themes—craft goods, daily life, public performance, and mortuary practice—offer interwoven views on the intersecting lives of people and the material objects that they use to communicate status among their families and to other members of society. The objects on display serve as metaphors for understanding the dynamics underlying how different cultures have invented and shaped inequality in its many forms.

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The six artists featured in this installation use the flag to make a wide range of points, from a scathing indictment of American foreign policy to a commentary on the paranoia and insecurity of the American middle class. Some of them, intentionally or not, challenge viewers' presumptions about such a recognizable symbol. With introspection and additional information, the viewer can come closer to understanding the artists' intention and the flags' meanings. The more aware we are of the possibilities, the richer our experience of these works will be.

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Organized in collaboration with twenty-two Studio Art Majors from the Class of 2013, this exhibition celebrates the dynamic dialogue and complex interactions between art and language in contemporary art. Adopting a historical perspective to understand current innovations, Word and Image presents key examples of paintings, sculpture, video, photography and other works on paper by a wide range of artists, including Gerald Auten, Marcel Duchamp, Daniel Heyman, Faith Ringgold, Ed Ruscha, Nancy Spero, and Fred Wilson. The word-imbued artworks on display reveal the strange, unsettling, and often humorous and subversive results when words escape from their traditional confines and begin to infiltrate the visual arts.

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In an attempt to revive traditional Japanese woodblock prints, artists of the shin hanga (new print) movement were forced to reconcile approaches to female subjects developed over the previous two centuries with the impact of modernity on both women and the arts in early-twentieth-century Japan. To ensure the contemporary relevancy of their work, the subjects they depicted ranged between deeply conservative and highly provocative conceptions of femininity, with demure, self-effacing geisha representing the former and so-called modern girls, known for their Westernized appearance and morally suspect lifestyles, representing the latter. By retaining production methods honed by their predecessors, they cultivated audiences in Japan and America who appreciated the unique legacies of the Japanese woodblock print tradition. These strategies successfully ensured a place for shin hanga depictions of women in an environment where new print media and styles imported from the West competed with Japan's most treasured visual traditions. The results of their efforts are amply apparent in this exhibition. With ninety woodblock prints from the Judith and Joseph Barker Collection, The Women of Shin Hanga showcases two and a half centuries of Japanese print designers' engagement with female subjects.

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