Hood Quarterly, autumn 2012
Essi Rönkkö, Year of the Arts Coordinator
The Hood Museum of Art is excited to be part of Dartmouth's Year of the Arts during the 2012–13 academic year. This campus-wide initiative of special artistic programs will highlight the vibrant arts culture at Dartmouth and underscore its position as one of the nation's leading academic arts communities, where the undergraduate experience is defined by an interdisciplinary approach to art that engages students in a variety of ways and settings.
The celebration is timed to coincide with the inauguration of Dartmouth's new Arts District, comprising the recently completed Black Family Visual Arts Center, the Hood Museum of Art, and the Hopkins Center for the Arts, as well as the arts plaza that is situated between the three buildings. The Hood and the Hop are both planning expansion and renovation projects in the coming years that will begin to take shape during the Year of the Arts, adding excitement and momentum to this initiative, as Dartmouth reaffirms its commitment to the arts.
Notable arts programming during the next academic year will include two groundbreaking exhibitions at the Hood (Crossing Cultures: The Owen and Wagner Collection of Contemporary Aboriginal Australian Art at the Hood Museum of Art and The Women of Shin Hanga: The Judith and Joseph Barker Collection of Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Prints); the 50th anniversary celebration of the Hopkins Center, with special performances by Yo-Yo Ma, John Lithgow, and Wynton Marsalis, among many others; Montgomery Fellows in residence on campus including the Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Robert Battle, anthropologist and Aboriginal Australian art and culture scholar Howard Morphy, and Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones, co-founders of the internationally renowned and Tony Award–winning Handspring Puppet Company; a special film series that will bring films and organizers from the international film festival circuit to Hanover; and many other art-related events. The arts are integral to the intellectual and cultural vibrancy of any community, and we believe that the exhibitions, performances, and programs that will take place during the Year of the Arts will be exciting and inspiring to all of our visitors.
Dartmouth has long championed the integration of the arts into an academic setting: campus initiatives have included the establishment in 1932 of a prestigious artist-in-residence program that continues to this day, former participants of which include such notable artists as José Clemente Orozco, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Alison Saar, and most recently Ying Li; the 1962 opening of the Hopkins Center as one of the nation's first campus-based performing arts centers; and the 1985 opening of the Hood Museum of Art, designed to house one of the oldest and largest college or university-based art collections in the United States. The diverse series of arts programs and initiatives taking place during Dartmouth's 2012–13 academic year—including an unprecedented number of programs and partnerships that have been developed by departments and campus organizations that are not traditionally affiliated with the arts—exemplify this historic commitment to leadership in the arts, while simultaneously establishing Dartmouth as a model for the artistic campus of the 21st century.
The Hood's programming throughout the year will be presented in celebration of the "Year of the Arts" initiative.