Methods and Materials 2

Every generation remakes art history. As students brush off dusty analytical tools and reanimate enduring cultural questions, the discipline acquires new urgency—and new relevance. This teaching exhibition, mounted in conjunction with an advanced seminar for departmental majors offered in fall 2025, invites students to rethink the methods and materials of their scholarly craft. Rarely shown and understudied, the objects gathered here represent "hidden gems" from the Hood Museum's collection. Together, these unfamiliar images and forms invite us to reflect on issues from racialization to migration. And they encourage us to reconsider art's canonical histories, to see across space and time. Can a contemporary Ethiopian photographic print unsettle our view of an 18th-century British painting? What does a 16th-century German engraving have in common with a modern Native American painting?

On view at the Hood Museum of Art, October 4 - November 22, 2025.

This exhibition is curated with Elizabeth Kassler-Taub in conjunction with ARTH 89.05: Art Historical Theory and Method. It is organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, and generously supported by the Harrington Gallery Fund.