ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

This exhibition arose out of an intersection of circumstance and coincidence. Traditionally, senior Hood interns' Space for Dialogue exhibitions were situated in the lobby of the Hood Museum. With the physical space of the Hood under expansion this year, we were tasked with creating these Virtual Spaces for Dialogue online.

I was interested in the unique qualities afforded websites as widely accessible, free passages to engaging with art and knowledge. Simultaneously, I felt that a crucial part of formulating and experiencing an exhibition lies in the way the works physically hang and engage in dialogue with one another. Thus, I knew from the start that I wanted to create a virtual space in some way.

My senior winter, I took a psychology seminar titled "the Self" with Professor Todd Heatherton. The course set me thinking about the paradoxically complex nature of the self. On the one hand, the self is widely accepted as a key concept. Yet it is one that is incredibly difficult to pin down and define. Ideas of self-knowledge, personality, individuality, and genetics all come into play when parsing the facets of the self.This exhibition integrates new approach to examining the self in art with a glimpse into the new Hood space. Set against a background of the white brick that will constitute the facade of the new Hood, Self(Hood) imagines a hang in Harrington Gallery.

Thank you to everyone at the Hood and the Dali Lab for their help throughout this project.

ABOUT ME

Born and raised in Santa Monica, California, Alison Guh is a member of the class of 2017 at Dartmouth College. A double major in Art History and Psychology, she is interested in pursuing a graduate degree in Art History and curatorial work.

As the Mellon Special Project Curatorial Intern, she has been working with Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi, the Hood’s Curator of African Art.