By Victoria Stapley-Brown. From The Art Newspaper. Posted on 6/26/18.
Students—as both learners and curators—are leading the way at Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum of Art, which is due to reopen on 26 January 2019 after a closure of nearly three years for an expansion and revamp by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. The $50m project expands the museum’s space by 50% to over 62,000 sq ft, adds six new galleries and renovates the museum’s original 1985 Charles Moore building (which was “not healthy”, Williams says, revealing rust and mould in the renovation process). “The museum is the largest classroom on campus,” says the director, John Stomberg.
The museum had been studying needs for expansion for almost 20 years, says the deputy director, Juliette Bianco. She points to the inadequate classroom space—which had been carved out of previous storage space and could only accommodate fewer than 20 students—as a major factor in the expansion. This project triples spaces for classes, which include a range of disciplines across the university; museum education has shifted from “teaching about art, to teaching with art”, Stomberg says. The spaces are designed for “object-based learning”, so students—thanks to on-site storage—will be able to easily access and work directly with objects in the encyclopaedic collection of over 65,000 works.
The museum had been studying needs for expansion for almost 20 years, says the deputy director, Juliette Bianco. She points to the inadequate classroom space—which had been carved out of previous storage space and could only accommodate fewer than 20 students—as a major factor in the expansion. This project triples spaces for classes, which include a range of disciplines across the university; museum education has shifted from “teaching about art, to teaching with art”, Stomberg says. The spaces are designed for “object-based learning”, so students—thanks to on-site storage—will be able to easily access and work directly with objects in the encyclopaedic collection of over 65,000 works.
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