For a school of its size, Dartmouth has a surprising number of opportunities for students beyond the classroom. Unfortunately, a lot of these opportunities often go unnoticed.
One such example is the Hood Museum of Art. With an extensive permanent collection of paintings, photographs and sculpture, along with frequent visiting exhibits, the Hood has a little bit to satisfy almost any artistic taste.
The museum has recently begun reaching out to the students with a new program: student docents, or tour guides. This matches up students with an interest in art with groups that are interested in learning more about what the Hood has. An initial training program introduces the guides to all the works. They are then free to pick out which works they like and elaborate on these for their groups.
The docents themselves arrange to bring various groups through the painting galleries. Generally the groups are ones that the docents are associated with, such as dorms or fraternity houses.
These tours go through the three painting galleries on the second floor. Currently there are three different exhibits here until April 12th.
The first collection is "American Paintings from the Dartmouth Collection, 1910-1960." The artists include John Sloan, Georgia O'Keeffe and Ben Shahn. Ranging from conventional realism to modern abstraction, this exhibit brings together a variety of approaches to painting from a short span of extensive societal change in America.
The second gallery contains the Romare Bearden collection of collages. These boldly colored collages are Bearden's rather unique approach to art, and depict scenes from ancient myths and Bearden's own childhood.
Finally, there is the gallery of "Recent Acquisitions: Contemporary Art." With works by Sol LeWitt, Mel Kendrick, and Sally Mann, this exhibit holds the contemporary and controversial images of today's artists.
I recently joined a tour led by Yvonne Handler '00, one of the docents. Beginning with the American paintings, we slowly circled the rooms as we learned various bits about each piece.
Alternating between posing questions and offering information, Handler brought out the history of the artists and the paintings, and the feelings the images evoked. She also attempted to articulate what she liked about various paintings, and had us do the same.
Carefully pulling out details, we saw how a typical rural Vermont scene hid an undercurrent of uneasy isolation ("Beaver Meadow" by Paul Sample). We stopped and marveled at the incredible detail of "Hunt Farm" by Maxfield Parrish, and compared how paintings of similar subjects could have very different effects on us.
Moving on to the Romare Bearden collection of collages, Handler explained how the collages have come to mean something different to her each time she sees them. She pointed out various parts of each one, and explained how they came together to tell a story.
In a quick tour through the contemporary art section, she admitted that modern art often confuses and even disturbs her, and pointed out several reasons why. But for one of the most pleasantly striking images of the day, she had us approach one photograph from a distance so we could experience the slow dawning of understanding as we discovered what we were looking at ("English Channel, Fecamp" by Hiroshi Sugimoto).
A freestyle tour through the Hood helps make the art understandable and approachable. With easy-going, friendly tour guides and an interactive emphasis, the tours create a meaningful understanding of the images seen and experienced.
The docents' eagerness to share their love of art with their tour groups makes the arrangement a perfect one, for both guide and group. The program deserves high marks for combining an opportunity for art-lovers to share their knowledge with an attempt to bring the art world little closer to those who may have been missing it.
