Past Exhibitions
overlooked
Featuring many prints never before on view, overlooked invites viewers to slow down, contemplate, and look longer. Printmaking techniques include photogravure, stonecut, woodcut, lithography, aquatint, mokuhanga, and silkscreen. In dialogue with one another, these works tell collective stories through their textures, layers, fields of color, distortions, and qualities unique to each printmaking medium.
A Seat at the Table
A Seat at the Table explores the significance of the table through a selection of 20th-century artworks from the Hood Museum's extensive collection. It invites viewers to think about the ritual of sharing a meal and the ways in which gathering allows humans to connect and create meaning in their lives.
A Space for Dialogue is a student-curated exhibition program that began in 2001. Hood Museum of Art interns create an installation drawn from the museum's permanent collection by engaging with every aspect of curation, from doing research and selecting objects, to choosing frames and a wall color, to planning a layout and writing labels and a brochure, to giving a public talk. There have been over 100 A Space for Dialogue exhibitions on a wide variety of themes.
Race, Labor, and Stardom in the Hollywood Musical
Behind the Scenes
Movie musicals from Hollywood's golden age are some of the most well-known and beloved films of all time. This exhibition features portraits of artists who made the musical sing and dance in its heyday, but from an unexpected perspective. These images provide a window onto the behind-the-scenes processes of labor and race in the making of musicals.
You Just Got to Laugh
Why do we find things funny? Is it because we are uncomfortable or delighted or simply amused? You Just Got to Laugh focuses on how comedy shows up in art and how the viewer engages with it. Humor presents itself here in many forms—word games, staged scenes, or dress-up—and all of them introduce a break between our expectations and reality. In the end, we laugh, even if we feel we shouldn't. This Space for Dialogue wants you to spend a few minutes laughing today, because even a little more of that is worth it.
A Space for Dialogue is a student-curated exhibition program that began in 2001. Hood Museum of Art interns create an installation drawn from the museum's permanent collection by engaging with every aspect of curation, from doing research and selecting objects, to choosing frames and a wall color, to planning a layout and writing labels and a brochure, to giving a public talk. There have been over 100 A Space for Dialogue exhibitions on a wide variety of themes.
In Bloom
Make Space
This summer, whenever the museum is open, visitors of all ages are invited to drop by Make Space, an art activity space in Engles Gallery. Taking inspiration from the adjacent exhibition Beyond the Bouquet: Arranging Flowers in American Art, visitors can create sculptural paper flowers to contribute to an in-gallery community garden wall. All are welcome.
Arranging Flowers in American Art
Beyond the Bouquet
Inspired by flowers, North American artists working across time, cultural traditions, and artistic styles have embraced floral beauty in the natural world. Beyond the Bouquet highlights works from the permanent collection that showcase how artists’ explorations of joy, ritual, and knowledge through flowers can touch our own lives and shared experiences.