Don’t Tear Your Hair Out
By Brian Kennedy, Director, Hood Musem of Art
Published on Friday, July 13, 2007
To the Editor:
I was pleased to read the recent articles by Tina Praprotnik ("Gah-Gah for Gu," June 29) and Zak Moore ("The Hair Up There," July 6) about the art installation by Wenda Gu, currently on display in Baker-Berry Library and commissioned by the Hood Museum of Art. They indicate a healthy debate by Dartmouth students concerning issues of artistic creativity and imagination.
Moore's last sentence, however, requires correction. He writes: "And the fact that we are supposedly paying millions for it makes me want to tear my own hair out." This is not a fact, not even a supposed fact. While I cannot be specific for commercial-in-confidence reasons, as I explained some time ago on the Ask Dartmouth website, Wenda Gu's commission fee was "a small fraction" of the rumored millions which seem to have entered Dartmouth lore.