Yale University Art Gallery Collection-Sharing Initiative

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The Hood Museum of Art is taking part in an innovative pilot program which has enabled the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) to lend forty-seven ancient Mediterranean objects to the Hood for a two-year period beginning in December, 2010. Initiated by YUAG and funded by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this collection-sharing project is intended to foster intra- and inter-institutional collaboration and expand opportunities for Dartmouth faculty from all disciplines to teach from works of art. Central to the initiative is a program of strategic loans from Yale’s encyclopedic collection, comprising nearly 200,000 works, by six “partner museums” for use in specially developed projects and related coursework. The program was created based on the belief that, while technologies have increased access to museum collections, there is no substitute for the experience of learning from original works of art.

Dartmouth faculty and students from a range of disciplines, including art history, classics, religion, and history, have made use of both the Yale loans and works from the Hood collection to explore current debates about connoisseurship, provenance, and cultural patrimony, among other things. They will also consider how the close observation of works of art can reveal connections to wider cultural, religious, political, and social themes in the ancient Mediterranean world. The project will also produce a website and a documentary film. The loans are available in the museum’s Bernstein Study-Storage Center for Dartmouth faculty and students alike. To learn more about the project, or to schedule an appointment to view the objects, please contact the Assistant Curator for Special Projects.

Click here to read Yale’s press release about the collection-sharing initiative.