The second floor of Dartmouth College's Hood Museum of Art remains closed to visitors, sealed off by a tall gray gate.
For weeks, though, the shut-off galleries have been abuzz as curators, painters and conservators work to install over 100 grave stelae, vases, statues and other works of art depicting childhood in ancient Greece.
These works will be on display for the next three months as parts of "Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood from the Classical Past," an exhibition opening Aug. 23.
The exhibition, co-curated by Jenifer Neils of Case Western University in Cleveland and John Oakley of the College of William and Mary, with the Hood's Katherine Hart serving as in-house curator, will be the first ever in the world to explore the question of what childhood in ancient Greece was like.
Derrick Cartwright, director of the Hood, noted that while scholars are becoming increasingly interested in the history of children and social constructions of childhood, relatively few systematic attempts have been made to study children's lives in antiquity before.
"While a great deal is known about the life of the adult Greek male in antiquity, and now to a certain extent something about the secluded existence of women, the missing narratives of children's lives represent a major gap in our understanding of ancient Greece," Hood public relations coordinator Sharon Reed added.
The works of art will be organized thematically: for example, one gallery titled "Ritual," will contain images of children participating in religious and civic festivals. Other such sections of the gallery are titled Myth, Work, Household, Play and Education.
The Hood hopes to attract a variety of audiences to the show. Cartwright noted that the idea of looking at children from other cultures naturally appeals to kids, and so the Hood's education department has targeted a number of programs and activities at young children.
Possibly the education department's most ambitious such venture is the construction of a nearly full-scale model of an ancient Greek house in the gallery.
The house is complete with reproductions of ancient Greek toys, cooking implements and writing supplies, as well as a re-creation of a traditional warp-weighted loom.
Visitors to the exhibition will also be able to rent the first audio guide the Hood has ever used, featuring remarks by the curators of the exhibition.
A special audio guide for children will also be available.
In December, the Coming of Age exhibition will travel to the Cincinnati Art Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio, before moving on to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Calif.
A scaled-down version of the exhibition will also open at New York City's Onassis Cultural Center.
Cartwright said that the movement of the exhibition to these other venues allows the Hood to "show off our curatorial strengths to much larger publics."
A symposium lasting from Nov. 6 to Nov. 8 will also draw scholars from across the U.S. and Europe to the Hood to give presentations that will put ancient Greek childhood into a wider context.
An illustrated catalog contains entries by the curators on each object on display in the exhibition and also several extended essays on topics relating to childhood in ancient Greece.
It is also one of the first works of its kind.
