Past Exhibitions
Exploring Masculinity and Gender Expectations within Women's Sports
Elegantly ViolentElegantly Violent: Exploring Masculinity and Gender Expectations within Women's Sports highlights the subversion of Western societal expectations of women in sports. It invites viewers to analyze the gendered history of sport, its impact on female athletes, and the opinions of the spectator. A mixture of modern and contemporary works from the past 120 years addresses the relationship between masculinity and female athletes' bodies, actions, and identities.
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.
Roman Coinage in Global, Historical Context
Money Talks
This installation uses objects from the Hood Museum of Art’s collection to challenge the traditional understanding of currency. Drawing on examples from across time and cultures to offer multiple perspectives, the installation asks audiences to question how a society defines “money” and its purpose.
A New Look at Old Art
Ancient Narratives
What brings objects into the Hood Museum of Art, and what stories can they tell us once they are here? This reinvestigation of the objects currently installed in Kim Gallery explores ancient origins and groundbreaking science, historical collecting practices and contemporary teaching strategies. Altogether, it uncovers new ways of looking at some of the most familiar works in the museum’s collection.
Intertwining Postcolonial Narratives in Contemporary Southeast Asian Art
Weaving as Method
In Southeast Asia, contemporary artists have expanded the traditional technique of weaving, transforming it into a conceptual and methodological tool for the mingling of archives, memories, and narratives. Built around Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen's The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, this exhibition showcases the work of three contemporary Southeast Asian artists who employ weaving as a medium with which to navigate the region's complex history and produce artworks that reinterpret the past through a postcolonial perspective.
The Grief of Almost
Nearly a decade in the making, The Grief of Almost, featuring four large-scale paintings and one monumental sculpture by artist Enrique Martínez Celaya, explores our drive toward self-understanding and desire to live a meaningful life. The exhibition presents visitors with an opportunity to contemplate the cycle of hope, catastrophe, and redemption that touches so many of us. A sculpture of a plane, painted like the night sky and suspended in the air, descends upon the gallery, dragging an uprooted apple tree. The artist invites visitors to compose writings and poems that museum staff will attach to the apple tree. These written contributions—which will remain secret as they sprout from the branches like leaves—will symbolically bring the dead tree back to life while also adding layers of community knowledge and meaning to the installation.
Weaving Ké
Weaving Ké explores the Diné (Navajo) concept of "Ké," which embodies community, family, and kinship. Ké reflects the generations of stories and emotions metaphorically woven into each object in this exhibition, emphasizing the deep connections to identity that this art represents. No matter the medium, these artists both express themselves and weave together narratives of self and community through their practice. Together, these objects invite us to reflect on the enduring significance of family and kinship within Indigenous cultures and emphasize art's vital role in connection and resilience.
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.