Whether watching a lecture in Dartmouth Hall, grabbing a coffee at Novack Cafe or on the way to Occom pond, it is hard to miss the varied pieces of public art across Dartmouth’s campus.
Some installations are so iconic and intertwined with the campus culture — for example, the Orozco murals — that it may feel like they have always been a part of the College. Yet many students are relatively unfamiliar with the stories behind these artworks.
Stomberg, who administers the Public Art Committee — the body which oversees campus art installations — takes on the responsibility of proposing pieces of public art that will be later recommended to the College Provost. The committee includes 10 to 12 faculty members and senior staff and meets one to two times a year, Stomberg said.
“Usually I’m working with my staff and faculty from around campus and we get excited about an artist or an artwork,” Stomberg said. “Once there gets to be a mount of energy where the faculty we’re talking to is excited, the donors we are talking to are excited and the curators of the Hood are excited, we have a public art committee meeting.”
Stomberg said the process tends to be “very complicated and long.”
“We’re trying to be very scrupulous about not just accepting things and clunking them around campus, but rather curate the campus with the same care that we curate our galleries.”
Among the committee’s responsibilities is determining where on campus pieces should be located. Collections curator Ashley Offill said the process has two sides: “the aesthetic and the conceptual.”
“[The Public Art Committee] thinks about the size and the scale of the sculpture in relation to any buildings and landscaping,” Offill said. “Then there’s the practical part, which is a lot of what I work with and help with, which has to do with ‘Can the ground support the sculpture? Are there any kinds of wires, cables or reservoirs?’”
Stomberg said the committee also considers how location informs who might interact with the piece. Inuit artist Piita Irniq’s commissioned piece “Inuksuk,” which is located in front of McNutt Hall, is an example of these kinds of decisions. Given its placement in front of the Admissions Office, the stone sculpture welcomes potential students and celebrates Indigenous contributions on campus, as the sculpture represents an Indigenous tradition, according to Stomberg.
“We said, ‘We’d like [Piita Irniq] to make something that’s welcoming and that bears a message for students,’” Stomberg said.
The piece was only meant to remain on campus for 10 years, but Stomberg chose to keep the installation due to its popularity.
While Offill explained that exhibitions at the Hood rotate out every six to nine months, outdoor exhibitions like Irniq’s piece can remain in place for years — “if not indefinitely.” Offill added that artists who are commissioned for outdoor displays work to combat environmental elements with materials such as powder-coated aluminum. The museum also administers “monthly walks” to check on the pieces, according to Offill.
“A lot of artists who are working to purposely have things outdoors are working with materials that are going to stand up to the elements really well — things that aren’t going to rust, that aren’t going to change,” Offill said. “We want to make sure that in addition to putting things out on campus that are beautiful and thought provoking, that we’re also not in danger of damaging the artwork or changing what the artist intended.”
While indoor museum pieces can change at the hands of a “curator,” Offill added that public art “is experiencing those changes of nature along with us.”
For example, the “Wide Babelki Bowl” by Ursula Von Rydingsvard, which sits outside Rollins Chapel, demonstrates “the effects of time and the environment,” Offill said. According to Offill, the College has two pieces by the same artist — one placed outside Rollins Chapel, and the other featured in the indoors 2024 exhibition Immersive Worlds: Real and Imagined.
“We made the conscious decision for one to stay inside of the galleries and one to stay outside so that we could allow [visitors] to see the difference between the one that has been outside versus the one that’s remained in the gallery space,” Offill said.
Von Rydinsvard’s outdoor piece has primarily been impacted by the environment in terms of its coloring, according to Offill.
Nature is not the only element that affects pieces on campus. Students’ interactions with Mark Di Suvero’s “X-Delta” — mostly from sitting on the wooden seat hanging from the geographic piece — have impacted the sculpture.
“You can see it from the math department, so the idea there was it’s going to be in a nice public place, viewable and connected to the math department, because X-delta is change,” Stomberg said. “That’s the whole nature of that piece, you sit on it and the whole sculpture changes.”
Stomberg added that the piece is a “wonderful metaphor for Dartmouth students.”
“As they come here, they change,” Stomberg explained. “They change us. Nothing stays the same.”
Another artwork meant to represent Dartmouth students is Kiki Smith’s “Refuge,” located on the Maffei Arts Plaza, Stomberg said. The piece was completed in honor of the 40th anniversary of coeducation and considers “what it would be like to be the first young woman coming to Dartmouth,” according to Stomberg.
“Kiki Smith’s [piece] is a direct story about a rabbit out in winter trying to stay warm, which she thought was a fitting metaphor for students trying to find their way at Dartmouth,” Stomberg said.
Art history and physics major Justin Lewis ’25 said he believes that public art is an “unsung hero” at Dartmouth, one that provides cultural value for students who are not regularly in contact with art.
“I think that with the state of Dartmouth, [the College] would behoove itself to engage with the humanities and the arts in a public forum where there are greater opportunities to learn — to draw in people who wouldn’t typically frequent certain talks and lectures,” Lewis said.
The “accidental encounters with creativity” and art on Dartmouth’s campus carries on the College’s mission of encouraging “people to become critical thinkers,” Stomberg said.
This mission extends to all Dartmouth students, regardless of their field of study.
“Whether you learn arithmetic or Russian poetry, we’re hoping you become critical thinkers,” Stomberg said. “Creativity is a big part of critical thinking because creative thinkers are critical thinkers.”
