Hood Museum of Art Jonathan Little Cohen Curator of American Art Michael Hartman to Become the Houghton P. Metcalf Jr. Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the RISD Museum
The Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, congratulates Jonathan Little Cohen Curator of American Art Dr. Michael Hartman on his appointment as Houghton P. Metcalf Jr. Curator at the RISD Museum in Providence, Rhode Island. Hartman will take up his new responsibilities at RISD on October 1, 2025.
John Stomberg, the Hood Museum's Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director, notes, "The Hood Museum has benefited greatly from Michael Hartman's tenure at the museum. His curatorial work in the galleries and his scholarship in our publications have had a profound impact on the way the museum practices art history. While he is moving on to his next adventure, we will long enjoy the fruits of his many contributions."
Dr. Hartman joined the Hood Museum's staff in 2021 as an associate curator, promptly becoming part of the curatorial team for the landmark exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, the first major installation of the museum's historical American art collection to be organized thematically rather than chronologically. The exhibition, which opened in January 2022, featured 160 early and contemporary works and, for the first time, intentionally installed objects by Euro-American, African American, Latin American, and Asian American artists and makers alongside traditional and contemporary Native American works to revisit the concept of "American" art. Along with Dr. Jami Powell, associate director for curatorial affairs and curator of Indigenous art, Hartman edited the peer-reviewed volume Reenvisioning Histories of American Art, which was based on this exhibition and co-published with the University of Washington Press.
In 2022, Hartman served as one of two in-house curators for the traveling exhibition ¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now. The exhibition, originally curated by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, was the first to unite prints from the civil rights era with related works by contemporary printmakers. Other innovative exhibitions that Hartman has curated include Beyond the Bouquet: Arranging Flowers in American Art; Liquidity: Art, Commodities, and Water; Historical Imaginary; and Photographs from Hollywood's Golden Era: The John Kobal Foundation Collection. Hartman's acquisitions for Dartmouth College have largely focused on artists historically underrepresented in museum collections—for example, he acquired Elizabeth Gilbert Jerome's South American Sunset (1870) and Charles Ethan Porter's Lilacs (about 1885–1890). He also significantly increased the museum's holdings of works on paper through the acquisition of works such as Wadsworth Jarrell's Revolutionary (1970) and Ester Hernandez's Sun Raid I (2008).
Hartman says, "In addition to my research on its strong holdings in American art, the Hood Museum has offered me an immensely rewarding opportunity to collaborate with my colleagues, Dartmouth students and faculty, our docents, and community members. Together, we have mounted a series of exhibitions during my tenure that have expanded how American art can be installed and interpreted in order to complicate our understanding of art and its histories. Our shared successes at the Hood Museum will propel me forward in future projects as the Houghton P. Metcalf Jr. Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum."