Past Exhibitions
The John Kobal Foundation Collection
Photographs from Hollywood’s Golden EraComprising some 6,000 prints, the recently acquired John Kobal Foundation Collection represents the full range of Hollywood studio photographs taken from the 1920s through the 1960s. This installation offers a glimpse into this renowned collection, highlighting a small selection of portraits and photographs from film sets.
Abstracting Nature
Transcendent LandscapesTranscendent Landscapes: Abstracting Nature explores the environment as a subject in abstract art. Focusing on five monumental works by female painters, this exhibition studies the spiritual role landscapes play in painting and considers the way these works evoke metaphysical experiences for both the artist and the viewer.
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.
Southern Gothic
The melodrama of Southern Gothic literature has captivated many with its enthralling treatment of the grotesque. The exhibition Southern Gothic explores the complex and often macabre world of the Southeastern United States. This niche genre deals with racial tensions, Reconstruction, the Great Depression, and the ghostly remains of the Antebellum era. This exhibition explores works from artists who have captured the spirit of Southern Gothic in all its darkness—and light.
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.
The Jane and Raphael Bernstein Collection
A Legacy for LearningA Legacy for Learning: The Jane and Raphael Bernstein Collection comprises a series of exhibitions that individually and collectively celebrate the Bernstein family's gifts to the collection of the Hood Museum of Art over four decades. These shows present photography, paintings, prints, drawings, and sculpture by European, Japanese, and North American artists.
In spring and summer 2021, the museum features the Bernstein Collection installations Pinpricks and Pomposity: The Inventiveness of English Visual Satire, Landscape(d): Modern Photography and the Environment, and Lyrical Journey: Toko Shinoda.
In August 2021, the installations change over to Inuit Art | Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, Both Sides of the Lens: Portrait Photography, and Mystic Peak: Selections from the Bernstein Collection of Japanese Art, through January 2022.
my life as a tunnel
Shannon Te Ao
Shannon Te Ao (Ngāti Tūwharetoa / New Zealander, born Australia, 1978) implements Māori traditions to explore the ambiguities and tensions within interpersonal relationships as well as the complex dynamics between Indigeneity, language, and loss. The starting point for my life as a tunnel (2018) is a scene from Charles Burnett’s iconic film Killer of Sheep (1978) in which the protagonist, Stan, and his wife—whose marriage has experienced much strain—slowly dance to the haunting Clyde Otis song "This Bitter Earth," originally recorded by Dinah Washington in 1959, capturing a pivotal moment of physical and psychological exchange between two individuals. This two-channel video is installed on two separate, back-to-back screens. Two male figures move intimately together to an a cappella version of "This Bitter Earth," translated into te reo Māori (Māori language). Their engagements seem affectionate, but there are subtle, yet palpable, moments of disquiet. This layered and poignant work weaves together past and present and asks: What can be found once something is lost?
Images of Disability
Images of Disability examines how artists, with and without disabilities, have approached the subject. Including examples as far back as 1790, the exhibit encourages conversations about agency, labelling, and representation.
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.