Hood Museum of Art

In a series of recent exhibitions, the Hood Museum of Art has explored the arts of indigenous peoples from around the globe. Coaxing the Spirits to Dance, currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, presented the Hood's collections of the arts of the Gulf of Papua New Guinea. Dreaming Their Way, organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., offered a remarkable range of paintings on canvas and bark by Australian Aboriginal women painters from that vast continent. Thin Ice: Inuit Traditions within a Changing Environment, on view until 13 May, focuses on the Hood’s remarkable collections of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century objects by Inuit peoples from the Arctic region. It is now joined by Our Land: Contemporary Art from the Arctic, on loan until 20 May from the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts. This exhibition presents works from the contemporary Inuit art collection of the Government of Nunavut, the region of Canada established in 1999 as part of a land claim settlement and now governed by its native peoples.

A longtime trustee of Dartmouth College and a friend and advisor to three Dartmouth presidents, Harvey P. Hood, Class of 1918, endorsed the view that an education must include exposure to the full breadth of human knowledge and experience for the fullness of human potential to be realized. As a distinguished businessman, a loyal and active alumnus, and a supporter of the arts, Harvey Hood exemplified this ideal in his own life. The generous gifts of Harvey P. Hood and his wife, Barbara C. Hood, along with gifts from the Hood family and from other friends of the arts at Dartmouth, have made this museum possible.

The purpose of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College is to inspire, educate, and collaborate with our academic and broader communities about creativity and imagination through a direct engagement with works of art of historic and cultural significance by making effective use of our collections and staff.