FINAL Hood Museum Facade April 2019 Photo by Alison Palizzolo 300ppi

The Hood Museum of Art is owned and operated by

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

, located in

Hanover, New Hampshire Hanover is a town located along the Connecticut River in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States. As of the 2020 census, its population was 11,870. The town is home to the Ivy League university Dartmouth College, the U.S. Army Corps of Eng ...

, in the United States. The first reference to the development of an art collection at Dartmouth dates to 1772, making the collection among the oldest and largest, at about 65,000 objects, of any college or university museum in the United States. The Hood Museum of Art officially opened in the fall of 1985. The original building was designed by Charles Willard Moore and Chad Floyd. In March 2016, the museum closed for a major expansion and renovation designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. The museum reopened to the public on January 26, 2019, with more gallery and office spaces as well as a welcoming new atrium. It also added the Bernstein Center for Object Study, which houses three smart object-study rooms, an object-staging room, and curatorial and security offices, all accessible to Dartmouth faculty and students via an entrance set parallel to the doors to the galleries themselves. As a teaching museum, the Hood Museum of Art's mission is to "enable and cultivate transformative encounters with works of artistic and cultural significance to advance critical thinking and enrich people's lives." It offers support to the Dartmouth curriculum across many disciplines and majors while encouraging co-curricular engagement through workshops such as Museum Collecting 101 and the undergraduate-driven Museum Club. The museum is free and open to all. The Hood Museum's collection is drawn from a wide range of cultures and historical periods. The 65,000 objects in the museum's care represent the diverse artistic traditions of six continents, including, broadly, Native American, European and American, Asian, Indigenous Australian, African, and Melanesian art. The museum hosts both collection-driven and loan-based traveling exhibitions. Among the museum's most important holdings are six

Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the A ...

n stone reliefs from the palace of

Ashurnasirpal II Ashur-nasir-pal II (transliteration: ''Aššur-nāṣir-apli'', meaning " Ashur is guardian of the heir") was king of Assyria from 883 to 859 BC. Ashurnasirpal II succeeded his father, Tukulti-Ninurta II, in 883 BC. During his reign he embarked ...

(about 900 BCE), the complete archive of photojournalist

James Nachtwey James Nachtwey (born March 14, 1948) is an American photojournalist and war photographer. He has been awarded the Overseas Press Club's Robert Capa Gold Medal five times and two World Press Photo awards. In 2003, Nachtwey was injured in a gren ...

, and the fresco by

José Clemente Orozco José Clemente Orozco (November 23, 1883 – September 7, 1949) was a Mexican caricaturist and painter, who specialized in political murals that established the Mexican Mural Renaissance together with murals by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Sique ...

titled ''

The Epic of American Civilization ''The Epic of American Civilization'' is a mural by the social realist painter José Clemente Orozco. It is located in the basement reading room of the Baker Memorial Library on the campus of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The mu ...

'' (1932–34), which was designated a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...

in 2013, located nearby in Dartmouth's

Baker-Berry Library The Baker-Berry Library is the main library at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The fresco, ''The Epic of American Civilization'', was painted by José Clemente Orozco in the lower level of the library, and is a National Historic Landm ...

References

External links

Official website
Dartmouth College facilities Experimental film festivals University museums in New Hampshire Art museums and galleries in New Hampshire Museums of Ancient Near East in the United States Museums in Grafton County, New Hampshire Hanover, New Hampshire Postmodern architecture in the United States Art museums established in 1985 1985 establishments in New Hampshire African art museums in the United States {{NewHampshire-museum-stub