Exhibitions Archive

The works of art in this exhibition, arranged in pairs, offer contrasting positions by artists on a variety of themes: men and women, the family, war and human suffering, landscapes and seascapes, images of others and of the self. Each pair is accompanied by a single question intended to provoke further questions about the artists’ individual approaches to their subjects: From what points of view (literal, emotional, intellectual) does the artist look at his/her subject? Is the artist’s stance celebratory? honorific? critical? a form of protest? In what ways does the artist communicate this to the beholder? Art history professors Joy Kenseth and Mary Coffey curated this exhibition in conjunction with their course Introduction to the History of Art II, a survey of art and architecture from 1500 to the present.

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Successive African art curators at the Hood Museum of Art have assembled an extraordinary and holistic vision of the arts of Africa that encompasses both important historical milestones and the multiple cultural and social vistas of this continent. Acquired over the past two years and on view together for the first time, these thirty-one exceptional objects map the contour of modern and contemporary African art from the 1960s to the present while also shedding critical light on the diversity of African artistic practices by multiple generations of artists. The installation includes an exciting array of paintings, photographs, sculptures, drawings, ceramic, and mixed media, including works by Ibrahim El Salahi, Lamidi Fakeye, Akin Fakeye, Owusu-Ankomah, Victor Ekpuk, Chike Obeagu, Candice Breitz, Nomusa Makhubu, Julien Sinzogan, Aida Muluneh, Halida Boughriet, Mario Macilau, Eric van Hove, Khulumeleni Magwaza, and Nidhal Chamekh.

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Vermont-based artist Eric Aho's series of Ice Cuts paintings is inspired by the hole cut in the ice in front of a Finnish sauna, an aspect of Finnish culture that Aho's family has maintained to this day. Intended for an icy immersion following the heat of the sauna, the avanto, as it is called in Finnish, underscores and personalizes the inherent contrasts in nature. Aho began the Ice Cuts series nine years ago, making one painting a year of the dark void produced by the act of sawing into the thick ice. This exhibition is the first to concentrate on the Ice Cuts paintings he has created to date. The central abstract form in these compositions provides the structure for experimentation with paint texture, surface, and subtly nuanced color, lending these frozen scenes both an austere beauty and a particular vibrancy. This exhibition brings together the major paintings in the series to date and smaller, related works on paper to offer unique insight into the artistic process.

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This exhibition features paintings by both American and Indigenous Australian artists and reveals the strength of the Hood’s contemporary holdings, including a selection of recent acquisitions with new work by Pat Steir, Colleen Randall, and Brenda Garand.

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In the spring of 2015, just days after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake shook Gorkha District and surrounding areas in Nepal, photojournalist James Nachtwey ’70 documented the immediate aftermath among these devastated communities, both in urban centers and in mountain villages only accessible by helicopter. Six weeks later, photographer Kevin Bubriski arrived in Kathmandu and captured the rebuilding of a city and the resilience of its people. A few of those images by each photographer are on view in this exhibition.

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Concinnitas is a Latin term that connotes an elegant, skillful joining of elements. It was used by Renaissance scholar, artist, and architect Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) to describe the beauty found in the confluence of perfect uses of number, position, and outline. The Concinnitas project was a two-year collaborative venture between Parasol Press and Daniel Rockmore, professor of mathematics and computer science at Dartmouth. In 2012, Parasol commissioned ten mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists—including two Nobel Laureates and five Fields Medalists—to create etchings of the mathematical expression most meaningful to them. These formulae were then printed by the fine-art print shop Harlan and Weaver as aquatints, evoking the look of equations quickly and elegantly sketched in white chalk on a blackboard.

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