Hood’s Friday Dedication Ceremony Is Filled to Capacity

Members of the Dartmouth community hoping to attend the dedication ceremony for the newly renovated and expanded Hood Museum of Art tomorrow will, if they haven’t already reserved seats, need to watch the event online instead, as there are no more seats to be reserved for the occasion.

The event will feature comments from President Philip J. Hanlon ’77; Provost Joseph Helble; Board of Trustees Chair Laurel Richie ’81; John Stomberg, the Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director of the Hood; and Arthur Hanchett, a council member of the Koasek Traditional Band of the Sovereign Abenaki Nation, who will talk about the museum’s location on Native American land. 

A conversation Stomberg will have with Hood architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien can also be viewed online.

The 3 p.m. dedication ceremony, for faculty, staff, and students who have already reserved seats, has been moved from the museum’s new Russo Atrium to Alumni Hall in the Hopkins Center for the Arts, which seats 400, more than the atrium’s capacity.

Dartmouth community members, as well as the general public, can visit the museum on Saturday, beginning at 11 a.m., when the museum reopens to the public. There will be refreshments, live music, and giveaways of T-shirts and other items while supplies last. Museum staff will be on hand to answer questions and there will selfie photo stations set up throughout the building. The museum will be open until 5 p.m.

The museum will open again the next day, on Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and will offer tours beginning at 1:30 p.m. Register for tours on the museum’s website. 

The museum, which has been closed since March 2016, has undergone a $50 million renovation and expansion and now has 16 galleries (up from 11), three teaching classrooms in the new Bernstein Center for Object Study (there had been just one) and overall 50 percent more floor space in the building, which was originally constructed in 1985. During the closure, the museum kept a presence on Hanover’s Main Street, operating a gallery called Hood Downtown.