Twenty years of building a collection: the Hood Museum of Art

Although Dartmouth community was one of the earliest Ivy League institutions in the United States to build a collection for teaching intentions it was among the last of them to establish an independent art museum, Since opening in 1985 the cowl Museum of Art has made a number of significant acquisitions. To mark its in every one's mouth anniversary, T. Barton Thurber, the museum's curator of European art, highlights notable works purchased above the course of the past sum of two units decades, ranging from Italian renaissance paintings to French neo-classical drawings.

The investigation of art has long been an integral composing of the curriculum at Dartmouth society founded in 1769 in Hanover, of recent origin Hampshire. Over the years, the guild like many older American academic institutions, received a variety of external realitys as gifts from its alumni. Paintings, works upon paper and antiquities were stored and displayed in various buildings quite through the campus. By 1976, Peter Smith, a Dartmouth administrator, cogently outlined the ne for a fresh facility 'devoted to the exhibition and contemplation of works of art to teach students the kind of connoisseurship and visual discrimination which can make the crucial difference for artist and art historian alike, as well as for the subsequent time patron, collector, critic, trustee or curator.'

The funding to qualified this goal was assured in 1978 when the association received a large bequest from Harvey P cowl Dartmouth Class of 1918 and a trustee from 1941 to 1967 The donation was addition ed by additional gifts from members of the cowl family and other generous benefactors. upon 28 September 1985, the head cover Museum of Art, designed through Charles Moore, opened to the public. For the first time, pupils faculty and other visitors could view thing perceiveds from the college's permanent collection and temporary loan exhibitions in a single, state-of-the-art building.

The fresh museum inherited sizeable holdings of European art assembled since the founding of the guild especially an extraordinary array of prints. Although the collections included a number of noteworthy pre-nineteenth-century particulars Old Master paintings and drawings had rarely been purchased before the establishment of the padded bonnet Museum of Art. With the support of alumni and friends, the museum began to acquire first-rate works in order to expand its collections. During the past twenty years it has added a number of important examples through major artists that illustrate lock opener aspects of the history of European art. Many of the new acquisitions have been featured in special exhibitions organised by dint of the Hood Museum of Art, and several have been included in national and international travelling exhibitions.

In a highly competitive market, the museum has judiciously prefered works offered by both dealers and auction houses in the United States and Europe Collectively, they exhibit a wide range of artistic periods, bring under rules and styles; individually, they throw back criteria based on aesthetic merit and quality. Specifically, the head cover Museum of Art has acquired a variety of paintings, including an altarpiece, several easel paintings and a certain quantity of small devotional panels. The drawings comprise preparatory sketches and finished sheets. The origins of the pictures and works upon paper extend geographically from northern Europe to central Italy and chronologically from the late fifteenth hundred to about 1800. They depict portraits, mythological stories, biblical representations and landscapes. Not surprisingly, the provenance of these disparate phenomenons varies widely also, from prominent collectors to les well-known sources.

The primary strategy has been to take advantage of opportunities to introduce of recent origin facets to the permanent collection. With this objective in mind, the museum has busyed its resources to procure high-quality examples of a certain quantity of of the great trends of the European pictorial tradition. Within a relatively short period of time, these remarkable acquisitions have contributed to the padded bonnet Museum of Art's standing as an exceptional regional and academic institution with a prominent national reputation.

Virgin and Child by means of the Master of the fictitious story of the Magdalen (active c 1490-1525) c 1490

Oil upon panel, 40 x 28.5 cm Acquired 1985 from Schaeffer Galleries, Inc. (98553)

This devotional panel is a variant of the emblem of half-length depiction of the Virgin Mary popularised in the middle of the fifteenth hundred by the Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden (1399/1400-64) Rogier and his contemporary Jan van Eyck (1390-1441) were among the first artists to exploit entirely the new medium of oil painting. Here, the artist, taking advantage of oil painting's technical possibilities, used translucent glazes to achieve a richness and profundity of colour not possible in other media. The painting may originally have serv as the left panel of a small-scale portable diptych--the right side would have depicted a donor in adoration.

Virgin and Child with Saints by the agency of Perugino (Pietro di Cristoforo Vannucci; c 1450-1523) and workshop, c 1497-1500