Hood Museum of Art

Dartmouth has collected objects since the eighteenth century, and the Hood's holdings grew over generations from a college teaching collection into a museum of national standing. The current building opened in the 1980s, designed by the architect Charles Moore, and gave that sprawling collection a proper home beside the Green.

In 2019 the museum reopened after a major expansion and renovation by the architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, which added galleries, teaching spaces, and a new entrance facing the Green. The redesign roughly increased the exhibition space and reframed the Hood as both a public museum and a working teaching tool for students.

The Assyrian reliefs are the Hood's signature treasures. Carved in gypsum for the royal palace at Nimrud around the ninth century before the common era, they show winged protective spirits and cuneiform inscriptions praising the king. They are among the finest examples of Assyrian palace art in any American collection, and the fact that they sit in a free college museum makes seeing them feel almost improbable.

Around them the ancient and global collections range widely, from classical antiquities to art of Africa, Oceania, and the Indigenous Americas, giving the museum unusual breadth for its size.

The Hood holds strong collections of American and European painting and works on paper, including pieces by major modern artists, alongside a substantial collection of Native American art. Because it serves a teaching college, exhibitions rotate frequently and often connect the permanent collection to current coursework and contemporary artists.

A short walk across the Green, in the reading room of Baker-Berry Library, is one of the Upper Valley's other great art experiences: the mural cycle The Epic of American Civilization, painted directly on the walls in the 1930s by the Mexican master José Clemente Orozco while he was teaching at Dartmouth. It is a National Historic Landmark and pairs naturally with a Hood visit.

Hanover is the quintessential New England college town, arranged around the Dartmouth Green with the campus, shops, and eateries all within an easy walk. The Connecticut River runs just to the west, forming the border with Vermont, and the surrounding Upper Valley is a bi-state region of river towns, farms, and wooded hills.

The town makes an easy base for combining the Hood and the Orozco murals with river walks, the nearby Montshire science museum across in Norwich, Vermont, and the broader Dartmouth campus, itself worth a stroll.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.