Luce Grant

The Hood Museum of Art is honored to have been awarded a major grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to support the opening installation of North American art from the museum's collection. This two-year grant of $280,000 will subsidize object conservation, the purchase of cases, pedestals, and state-of-the art lighting, and the hiring of temporary art handlers and a curatorial assistant for one year. The end result will be a sequence of six galleries that will be divided roughly into thirds, with two each dedicated to traditional and contemporary Native American art; Euro-American art from the colonial period to the early 1900s; and American modern and contemporary art, set within an international context. We envision these galleries to be vital, changing, and inspirational, and to spark dialogue across media, cultures, and time periods.

The installation will be distinctive for highlighting both the museum's large collection of Euro-American art and its less-well-known holdings of Native American art and material culture. Dartmouth has collected in both areas from the period of its founding, and these holdings have grown dramatically over time, particularly in the last three decades, during which new acquisitions funds and many gifts have enabled the museum to represent key developments in North American art up to the present. The project's end result will be a series of beautifully articulated and well-organized installations that will expand boundaries while also deepening intellectual inquiry and scholarship within the field.