JENNA BLAIR
Campus Engagement Manager
AMELIA KAHL
Barbara C. and Harvey P. Hood 1918 Senior Curator of Academic Programming
Hood Quarterly, fall 2025
At the heart of the museum's campus engagement is our connection to the Dartmouth community, whose expertise, viewpoints, and interests have shaped the College into such an extraordinary place. We are committed to understanding and incorporating campus perspectives in all facets of our work and fully integrating the museum as part of the Dartmouth experience. As part of the Academic Programming Department, our campus engagement focuses in particular on co-curricular experiences ranging from the Museum Club and senior internships for students to special tours and creative opportunities for staff and faculty.
Throughout the museum's forty years in existence, student involvement has taken many forms, including student docent programs, student advisory boards, and, most significantly, museum internships. The museum's internship program, established in 1982 (even before the opening of the original museum in 1985), provides a foundation for students to explore museum work, experiment, and develop special projects alongside staff mentors. We have hosted 294 interns, and many of our internship alumni have gone on to work at major institutions in the museum field. Since 2001, 125 museum interns have developed their own exhibitions through the A Space for Dialogue exhibition series, contributing fresh perspectives on the museum's collection.
The museum also invites students from all disciplines to help acquire objects for the collection through the noncredit course Museum Collecting 101. Each year, Hood curators guide the students through the acquisition process and select a medium or theme to focus on in the acquisition. Students review artworks in person during a trip to New York City and meet gallerists, artists, and museum curators along the way. At the culmination of the course, students participate in a spirited debate to make their final purchase for the collection. Since its inception, also in 2001, students have acquired 36 works and have helped build a collection of art relevant to teaching and interdisciplinary engagement.
The museum has also served as a resource and partner for Dartmouth staff, including our campus colleagues who also offer co-curricular programming. The museum collaborates by providing access to collections, content, and expertise as well as physical space for our campus community to gather in support of their work and our shared goals. For example, the museum has partnered with the Student Wellness Center to create movement and mindfulness programs both in the galleries and virtually. And the museum frequently collaborates with the Office of Pluralism and Leadership to develop museum experiences that foreground social action and dialogue, exploring how art and artists can contribute to the creation of a socially just world.
This co-curricular work has always been part of the museum's practice, primarily served by Academic Programming and Education Department staff. In 2013, Jessica Womack '14 was hired as an intern dedicated to campus engagement in conjunction with the exhibition Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties. As the museum developed its expansion plans, Womack's success in engaging student audiences served as the basis for a new staff position: a coordinator of campus engagement. Along with an expanded resource for curricular engagement (the Bernstein Center for Object Study), this position was a core part of the museum's commitment to campus upon the Hood's reopening in 2019. The campus engagement coordinator (later manager) serves campus groups and invests their time and energy into developing co-curricular programs and new undergraduate experiences at the museum, including new student initiatives like the Museum Club and Student Art Lending at Dartmouth (SALAD).
Since its inaugural year in 2018, the Museum Club has aimed to engage students and empower them to connect the museum to campus. Students from all backgrounds can join, regardless of their major. It also provides an opportunity for students to be deeply involved in the museum from the beginning of their Dartmouth experience, rather than waiting for a senior internship. Students meet weekly to learn about the Hood, gain a deeper understanding of museum practice, and use their knowledge to launch new student engagement initiatives. Early on, the club established the popular event series Hood After 5, modeled after the "student takeover" during our reopening following the expansion project. Hood After 5 is hosted by the Museum Club each term, and attendees enjoy live music, refreshments, artmaking, and gallery activities tailored to themes in our current exhibitions.
Today, low-barrier-to-entry programs like the Museum Club and Museum Collecting 101 continue to make the work of the museum accessible and transparent to students from all disciplines, whether they are a first-year just setting foot on campus or a senior discovering the museum during their final months in Hanover.
Campus engagement staff also thinks expansively about other entry points to foster student engagement with art and ideas. Launched in 2024, Student Art Lending at Dartmouth (SALAD) allows students to borrow works of art from the museum. These works are part of a museum-quality capsule collection that is separate from the Hood's accessioned works and developed with both curatorial and student input. Students across campus can decorate their space and discover new artists as part of the unique experience of living with works of art for the academic year.
Professional development is also a strategic goal of many of our student-facing initiatives. The museum offers students opportunities to develop skills to qualify for off-campus internships, and staff supports them in discovering and preparing for career pathways in museums and the arts after they leave campus. The museum also depends on the dedicated work of student employees, who help visitors in the galleries, prepare artmaking spaces for elementary students, distribute posters, enter data, and gain general office experience outside of the academic project–based work of interns.
As a department, we are continually interrogating what engagement means to us and our campus community. Art holds important histories, and there is much for us to learn through our collection of objects, but it can also heal, inspire, and offer us moments of incredible beauty. And when we, as a campus community, are overworked or stretched thin, the museum can be a place of rest and respite. We've covered a lot of fertile ground in our forty years, but there is still more we can achieve together as a campus community. The future is full of possibilities.