HANOVER, NH.- In recognition of America’s 250th anniversary, the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, will present a slate of co-curated exhibitions that address significant moments and themes in American art and culture. Curators worked collectively to tell not one but many stories of American art and its histories entirely from the Hood Museum’s collection. Most of the galleries will be dedicated to the presentation of twelve exhibitions––including three faculty-curated teaching shows—that aim to acknowledge and expand upon the ways American art has created and shaped this country. Featured throughout the year will be new acquisitions, collection highlights, and objects never before shown.

John Stomberg, Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director, explains, “In recent years, the Hood Museum has taken part in ongoing dialogues to expand the ‘American art’ canon in ways that acknowledge, critique, and celebrate the multiplicity and complexity of our nation and its histories. The 2026 exhibitions build on this work and demonstrate the vital role artists have always played in helping us contextualize the past and imagine possible futures. We look forward to inviting audiences to participate in these dialogues with us.”

The Hood Museum’s curatorial team collaborated to introduce these exhibitions through a multitude of voices and academic and cultural viewpoints, enabling all visitors to engage in the conversation about how art in America has been and continues to be perceived. “It seemed important to us to take up the democratic process as a method as well as a topic.

The shows in this project have benefited enormously from team curation,” notes Stomberg.

Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Indigenous Art Jami Powell adds, “Throughout the 2026 exhibitions, audiences will recognize many of the works of art on view and see familiar visual narratives. But they will also see something new. We are excited for people to bring their existing understandings of American art and its histories into the galleries while also encountering works by artists who may be unfamiliar, narratives they may not know, and questions they may not have considered.”

Sestercentennial Exhibitions

*Exhibitions marked with an asterisk will be on view during the United States’ 250th anniversary on July 4, 2026.

*From Mastodon to Mosaic: Building an Academic Art Collection in America Through February 27, 2027

Drawn from the museum’s permanent collection of over 70,000 objects, From Mastodon to Mosaic looks at how significant works of global art from historical cultures came to Dartmouth and impacted both the academic and aesthetic life of the College and the local community. Over more than 250 years, the museum’s collection has changed in scope, size, and physical location, moving among seven different buildings on campus until the construction of the Hood Museum of Art in 1985.

*Always Already: Abstraction in the United States Through March 20, 2027

Always Already expands the conversations related to and broadens the history of
“American Abstraction” by celebrating diverse approaches to color, geometry, and composition. In addition to paintings and drawings, the exhibition features textiles, ceramics, and sculpture. These works emerge from a wide variety of artistic impulses and inspirations, and the overarching strength of their visual relationships suggests the merit of a history of American abstraction that extends beyond issues of legacy or influence.

*Revolution Reconsidered: History, Myth, and Propaganda Through August 8, 2026

Revolution Reconsidered explores how visual representations of the American Revolution became, and remain, potent carriers of national history and identity. Beginning with Dartmouth’s role in the Revolutionary era, the exhibition revisits well known images of the American Revolution and traces the reappearance and repurposing of Revolutionary imagery to the present day, asking how each generation reshapes our understanding of US art and history.

*American Pop
December 13, 2025–November 7, 2026

American Pop considers how artists respond to, appropriate, and critique popular imagery from visual culture in what is now the United States. By incorporating familiar symbols from both pop culture and art history, these artists interrogate concepts including consumer culture, settler colonialism, and environmental extraction. Highlighting significant artists from the mid-20th-century Pop Art movement such as Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol, the exhibition also features artists working more recently such as Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Tony Abeyta, and Cannupa Hanska Luger.

*Inhabiting Historical Time: Slavery and Its Afterlives December 20, 2025–July 11, 2026

Inhabiting Historical Time explores slavery’s impact and enduring legacies via histories of oppression, resistance, subversion, and resilience. Objects related to these themes range from a 19th-century jug by David Drake, an enslaved man, to civil rights–era photography and contemporary artists’ explorations of enslavement and resistance. Inhabiting Historical Time asks how we understand the legacies of slavery and how they continue to shape our nation today.

*Art Histories/Art Futures January 10–July 25, 2026

Art Histories/Art Futures features artists who are drawing on a range of histories and positionalities as they create work to look ahead. Because of its central location in the museum’s Kaish Gallery, this exhibition will set the stage for the entire 2026 slate of shows and supply the groundwork for how the Hood Museum is thinking about US art histories. The juxtaposition of these artists encourages the viewer to imagine the possibilities of a shared future informed by a variety of perspectives.

*Nurturing Nationhood: Artistic Constructions of America, 1790–1940 February 7–August 29, 2026

Nurturing Nationhood explores how artists defined, perpetuated, and nurtured ideas of nationhood in US and Native American art in the 19th and 20th centuries. While expansive landscape paintings certainly presented one vision of the nation, portraits, textiles, basketry, and other kinds of artworks also contributed to how people understood the connections between their lives and this place. Countering the idea of a single objective truth, however, some of the works in this exhibition shape alternately intersecting and conflicting notions and perspectives, highlighting both contrasting communal knowledge systems and the constantly evolving concept of American nationhood.

Division of Labor: Work in the United States July 25–November 7, 2026

Division of Labor explores how artists have visualized labor in the United States from the 19th to the 21st centuries and especially the transition from agriculture to industry to office work. It also examines how visual depictions of labor impact understandings of class, race, and gender. A central work within the exhibition is Lorna Simpson’s Corridor (2003), a two-channel video installation that was last on view at the Hood Museum twenty years ago. Division of Labor encourages visitors to consider how art can both challenge and reinforce the ways we have been socialized to think about and value work.

On Shared Ground: Asian American Art in Conversation August 22–November 28, 2026

On Shared Ground explores Asian American art from the Hood Museum’s collection by focusing on its cultural, social, and intellectual dialogues with broader American art. It seeks both to highlight the significance of Asian American art within the larger context of American art history and to demonstrate its integration into a connected artistic community. This approach ultimately locates Asian American art as an active, participatory element in the contemporary American art scene.

Dartmouth Faculty-Curated Exhibitions

Behind the Scenes: Race, Labor, and Stardom in the Hollywood Musical January 17–March 21, 2026

Behind the Scenes presents selections from the Hood Museum’s John Kobal Foundation Collection of Hollywood photography with a focus on the American musical. This exhibition is organized by Desirée Garcia, Chair and Professor, Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies, and affiliate of the Department of Film and Media Studies at Dartmouth.

American Printmaking March 28–June 20, 2026

American Printmaking brings together works that highlight the diversity of printmaking in America and the medium’s impact upon artists and their work. This exhibition is organized by Tricia Treacy, Chair and Professor, Department of Studio Art at Dartmouth.

*La Mirada Boricua: Making Spaces for Self-Reflection and Decolonial Thought June 27–November 21, 2026

La Mirada Boricua translates as “The Boricua Gaze,” with “Boricua” derived from the Taíno indigenous name for Puerto Ricans. This exhibition explores contemporary Puerto Rican art and the intimate and public spaces it creates for engaging with the archipelago’s colonial history, the experience of migration and diaspora, and the possibilities for a decolonial future. This exhibition is organized by Israel Reyes, Chair and Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Dartmouth.