Exhibitions Archive
Historical Imaginary
Historical Imaginary pairs an unfinished study for Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware with historical and contemporary artworks from the Hood Museum’s collection to explore how artists—literally—constructed ideas about US history. This exhibition questions how artworks shaped, and continue to shape, our perception of the past, in the hopes that we can build upon our shared, complex, and sometimes violent history to imagine and create a more equitable future.
Legacies of Queer Indigenous Liberation
Love as CeremonyLove as Ceremony: Legacies of Two-Spirit Liberation highlights the work of contemporary North American "Two-Spirit" artists, exploring the ways in which two-spirit communities reclaim ancestral knowledge and imagine possible futures. The exhibition focuses on expressions of joy, love, and liberation in an effort to both resist and dispel Western colonial characterizations of queerness which have historically perpetuated narratives of taboo and voyeurism.
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.
Margaret Bourke-White, World War II, and Life Magazine
Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904–1971) was one of the first photographers that Life magazine sent to Europe to cover World War II. The images she sent back filled endless pages of the magazine; Americans were riveted; and sales skyrocketed. This exhibition is drawn entirely from a unique portfolio of her photographs created near the end of the war.
Windows in Art
On ViewOn View, a thematic exploration of windows in art, is organized around three central themes: a view into the private world, a view into the public world, and the abstraction of the window itself. Featuring works by twentieth and twenty-first century American artists, the exhibition invites you not only to consider what lies beyond the window, but also how its framing influences our perception.
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.
Pigment of Imagination
Ochre is a family of mineral pigments made from iron oxides and hydroxides, commonly known as rust. Humans have collected ochre for at least 500,000 years, and it underpins the earliest evidence of symbolic culture, and later, figurative art, in the archaeological record. Pigment of Imagination explores the dual identity of ochre––it is both mineral and pigment––and the ways individuals and communities have used it to express complex relationships with the environment. To paint with ochre is to paint with the earth itself; it is a means of embodiment, of putting the land beneath one's feet and into the storyscapes of cultural knowledge. The works exhibited here––from Africa, Australia, Oceania, and North and South America––reflect the global distribution of ochre and its universal appeal as both material and metaphor. To view these works is to visit the landscape of their creation, to bear witness to place as much as meaning.
Ga Bose Gangwe
Mohau Modisakeng
After dark, people passing the Hood Museum are able to experience a video work, Ga Bose Gangwe, by the South African artist Mohau Modisakeng. This graceful expression of resilience and determination is on display in the vitrine window above the north entrance to the museum until July 1, 2023. The title of the video comes from a Setswana (a Bantu language spoken in Southern Africa) proverb, phiri o rile ga bo se gangwe, that translates to “better luck next time” or “do again" or "try again.” Using the movements of a group of Black male dancers as metaphor, Modisakeng reflects on how the specter of colonialism weighs down the aspirations of post-apartheid South Africa and other post-colonial countries.