Past Exhibitions
Cubism and Its Legacy
In the first few decades of the twentieth century, avant-garde artists sought to challenge traditional notions about pictorial representation by creating art that responded to the rapidly changing modern world that surrounded them. The most far-reaching and radical of these artistic movements was cubism, developed between 1907 and 1914 by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Their artistic collaboration produced works that defied the Renaissance convention that painting should represent an illusionistic window into the world. Instead, cubism shattered preconceived notions about vision, asserted the flatness of the picture plane and the materiality of paint, and presented subjects from various perspectives and planes at the same time. Cubism and Its Legacy, drawn from the Hood Museum of Art's extensive collection of modern and contemporary art, presents the vast range of work made possible by these developments.
The Vollard Suite
Picasso
Pablo Picasso created the one hundred etchings in his ferociously inventive Vollard Suite between 1930 and 1937. This suite—on view at the museum in its entirety—reveals his mastery of the printmaking process as well as his dialogue with surrealism and the art of the past.
The Box in a Valise
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp described his Boîte-en-valise (Box in a Valise) as a “portable museum” that would allow him to carry around his life’s work in a traveling box. The artist spent five years, between 1935 and 1940, recreating his oeuvre in miniature through photographs, hand-colored reproductions, and diminutive models. These facsimiles of the artist’s major paintings, drawings, and sculpture were then placed in imitation-leather boxes or valises that he would spend the rest of his life assembling. Duchamp’s most significant works are cleverly arranged inside each box like a traveling salesman’s wares; open the lid and you find a treasure trove of art objects all reproduced on a miniature scale. The Hood Museum of Art recently acquired an important example of the Box in a Valise edition. This work, which the artist housed in a red linen-lined box about the size of a large attaché case, will be shown at Dartmouth College for the first time in this installation.
Metamorphosis and the Feminine
Agents of Change
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.
Views of the Temple of Sibyl at Tivoli across Time
The Allure of Ruins
This installation explores views of ancient Roman ruins and the Italian countryside that have inspired artists for centuries, particularly the Temple of Sibyl at Tivoli. For both American and European artists, ruins such as those at Tivoli have always possessed a seemingly universal and timeless quality.
Old and Modern Masters
Continuity of the Spiritual
This installation explores the representation of emotion and spirituality in works of art dating from the Renaissance to today in paintings, prints, and video.