Exhibitions Archive

The year 2006 will mark the passage of 150 years since the arrival at Dartmouth of one of the college's most prized possessions in the realm of art and culture: the Assyrian reliefs, currently on display in the Kim Gallery of the Hood Museum of Art. Originally part of the decorative scheme of the so-called "Northwest Palace" of King Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BCE) in Nimrud, Iraq, six large-scale reliefs depict a ritual performance undertaken by the king. Human and supernatural beings are also in attendance. Scholarly understanding of Assyrian art has increased considerably over time, as its visual, cultural, and historical meanings have been studied from a variety of perspectives and their role as visual propaganda has been recognized.

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Explore the rich artistic legacy of the ancient Costa Ricans in this exhibition of vessels and figures that helps us trace relationships between the peoples of Costa Rica and their neighbors north and south. In ancient Costa Rican cultures, these objects were used to teach about mythology, religion, and the environment. Today, they help archaeologists reconstruct ancient paths of trade and distribution, revealing that thousands of years ago Costa Rica was, in effect, already regionally "globalized." The exhibition is guest curated by Fred Lange, and archaeologist of Central American cultures.

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To collect up to a final limit is not simply to own or to control the items one finds; it is to exercise control over existence itself through possessing every sample, every specimen, every instance of an unrepeatable and nowhere duplicated series.

—Roger Cardinal and John Elsner, The Cultures of Collecting

col·lec·ta·ne·a 1.) Passages, remarks, etc., collected from various sources; (as collect. sing.) a collection of passages, a miscellany. 2.) A selection of passages from one or more authors; an anthology.

This exhibition illuminates the broader social history of the Hood by exploring the diverse "authors" of its collection history and will look at how the museum's collection has been developed and (re)defined over time. Uniting traditional with contemporary and Western with non-Western art via pottery, sculpture, utilitarian objects, textiles, photographs, and prints, col·lec·ta·ne·a explores different collecting practices and ideologies that reflect the museum's unique identity as a hunter and gatherer of material culture. Topics addressed in the exhibition include the role of private collectors in developing museum collections; the continuation of older cultural traditions in newer forms; the relation between museum collections and teaching at Dartmouth; changing perspectives of "art" versus "artifact"; the value of "hybridized" art versus "authentic" art; and the continued development of the Hood's collections in new and interesting ways.

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The Hood begins the year with Critical Faculties: Teaching with the Hood's Collections. This unique exhibition has been organized by faculty members of four of the museum's main academic constituents at the college. Art History, Studio Art, Classics, and Anthropology have installed objects from the Hood's collections that represent each discipline's approach to teaching with art, offering visitors the opportunity to experience works of art that represent a wide range of media and periods through various perspectives.

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It is not widely known that ancient Greek artists were the first to create images of children that showed them as they were instead of as miniature adults. They also observed and recorded children’s characteristic gestures, their bonding with parents and caregivers, their various activities from learning to crawl to assisting in religious ceremonies, and their love of play. In the absence of extensive written testimony about children from this period, artifacts and images are a vital link to the lives of girls and boys from birth to adolescence.

Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood from the Classical Past is the first major exhibition to explore these images of childhood from ancient Greece. Over 120 art objects on loan from American, Canadian, and European collections chronicle the emotional and familial environment in which children were raised, their participation in religious rituals, the commemorative objects that marked their early death, and their transition to adulthood. The exhibition also presents images and stories of children in mythology. Painted vases, sculptures, grave monuments, and artifacts such as toys and baby feeders bring ancient Greek children’s experiences to life.

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