Exhibitions Archive
The Sepik River and Abelam Hill Country
Melanesian Art
The art of Melanesia is a particular strength of the Hood Museum of Art's collection, and the museum's primary holdings are from the island of New Guinea in the southwestern Pacific. The objects in this gallery offer a window into the region's traditional religions, people's ideas about the supernatural world, and the social relationships of people living within the traditional societies located in the Sepik River region and Abelam Hills in the northern part of the island.
A Focus on Africa
Global Contemporary
Global contemporary art encapsulates the practices of Western and non-Western artists alike who emobdy the spirit of the time. This installation presents a contemporary story of the continent of Africa through fifteen powerful works in diverse media and in myriad forms by multiple generations of artists. The works explore a range of issues, including the impact of the colonial past on present challenges of nation-building in Africa, feminism, urbanism and infrastructural changes, globalization, forced and voluntary immigration, and environmental challenges.
A World of Relations
This selection of works from the Hood's Owen and Wagner Collection of Aboriginal Australian Art explores a series of relationships between spouses, siblings, parents, and children, as well as those bonded by shared lands or experiences. Family ties run deep in Indigenous Australian art. And yet, for Indigenous Australians, the concept of kinship is more than simply genetic: it is the basis for a complex cosmology that unites all things in the universe.
The Expanding Universe of Postwar Art
Exchanging ideas has always motivated artists to evolve new approaches to their work. These exchanges sped up demonstrably in the early 20th century, when ships could make a transatlantic voyage in a matter of weeks, allowing New Yorkers to see the latest ideas coming out of Paris--and vice versa. This gallery is dedicated to the excitement of the postwar period in New York and California, in Paris and Tokyo. It also represents the expanded participation in the art world by previously underrepresented groups, highlighting a time of emerging visual dialogues among an increasingly diverse and international group of artists who shared their work with a growing world audience.
The Politics of Pink
Pink is not just a pretty color. An exhibition exploring all things pink, from its problematic associations with femininity, gender norms, and race to its contemporary reinvention in activism. The use of the color pink, these works make clear, transcends the purely aesthetic.
Creating Knowledge and Control
Creating Knowledge and Control features works that explore technology as a top-down, disciplinary tool that restructures space, time, and the relations among people and activities. Today, such tools are created and used not only by governments, but also by multinational corporations that leverage the potential of managed information systems and big data. As technology and information management evolves, questions arise regarding whether and how we should govern these tools of control and surveillance, and this installation explores these issues.