Past Exhibitions
Irregular Polygons
Frank Stella
Although based on simple geometries, the Irregular Polygons (1965-66) comprise one of the most complex artistic statements of Frank Stella’s career. Each of the eleven compositions combines varying numbers of shapes to create daringly irregular outlines. Stella made four versions of each composition, varying the color combinations. They mark a radical shift from Stella’s earlier striped works in their use of large fields of color. The asymmetric canvases play with illusion, confronting Stella’s previous emphasis on flatness while anticipating his career-long exploration of space and volume in both painting and sculpture.
Grounded in an Infinite Landscape
Aerial Perspectives
The works of art in this exhibition are all abstracted depictions of landscapes from an aerial perspective, a point of view that draws us into the work through an intensified experience of the entire composition. They all share the same basic focus, evoking some geographical construct or another, and a sense of place. While they have a visually abstract quality, this does not mean that we become lost. Rather, the means through which the artists masterfully render their subjects (including line, color, light, shadow, volume, and depth) encourage us to take an active role in these works’ realization. They ground us, ironically, as we examine them from every angle, following the symphony of marks along the surface and subconsciously constructing the imagined landscape both within and beyond the edges of the frame.
The Gibson Girl
A Man-Made Icon
The Mark Lansburgh Collection
Native American Ledger Drawings from the Hood Museum of Art
This collection, brought together by Mark Lansburgh, Dartmouth Class of 1949, is considered to have been the largest and most diverse of its type in private hands; it was acquired by Dartmouth College in 2007. Curated by Joe Horse Capture, this exhibition features drawings depicting both the struggle for cultural survival and the Native adaptation to an imposed non-Native lifestyle during a period of profound upheaval among the Plains peoples during the second half of the nineteenth century. It is presented in conjunction with a Leslie Center for the Humanities Institute entitled Multiple Narratives in Plains Ledger Art: The Mark Lansburgh Collection.
Representations of the Glove as Fetish Object
Hand-In-Glove
Andy Warhol's American Dream
Follow the Money
A lively mixture of paintings, photographs, and prints juxtaposes Andy Warhol's (1928-1987) renderings of coins and dollar signs with images of people both famous and unknown. Art historian Trevor Fairbrother guest curates this exhibition in honor of the Andy Warhol Foundation's recent gift of 153 Warhol photos to the museum; Follow the Money also includes a rarely seen Warhol portrait of Dartmouth graduate Nelson A. Rockefeller, New York state governor (1959-73) and U.S. vice-president (1974-77).