DARTMOUTH UNDYING

1793

The Trustees commission Joseph Steward, class of 1780, to paint a portrait of Eleazar Wheelock. The commission is made difficult by the absence of its subject—Wheelock died 14 years earlier. Steward's solution: he has a Parson Ludovicus Weld pose in Wheelock's place.

1853

College Librarian Oliver Payson Hubbard writes to Austin Wright, a member of the class of 1830 living in northwest Persia: "Can you without too great trouble to yourself or them persuade some of your brother missionaries to procure for your Alma Mater some mementos of the Ancient Cities now opened on the Tigres? Williams College has, from some of her graduates, received some." The result of the letter is the acquisition of a set of 2,800-year-old bas reliefs from Assyria. Experts say that only the British Museum has finer examples.

1916

The first representative exhibit of works by the artists of the Cornish Colony opens in Robinson Hall. Fearing that an entire room of Maxfield Parrish paintings and 15 bronzes by Augustus Saint-Gaudens would not be enough of a lure for students, College officials offer cash door prizes.

1934

Jose Clemente Orozco completes his Baker Library murals and controversy erupts. The New York Times suggests the criticism is "related to the shock which Mexican color and Mexican form inflict on the sensibilities of those who live north of the Rio Grande." An irate alumnus writing to this magazine has a different reaction: "They were a stench in the nostrils of every good taste."

1958

W. Wedgewood Bowen, director of the College Museum, claims his is the oldest museum in continuous existence in America. Bowen bases his claim on a 1772 diary note written by David McClure. The entry tells of sending a four-pound "mammoth's grinder" to Dartmouth.

1985

For the first time since they left Nineveh, the Assyrian Reliefs are reassembled as a group. They go on permanent display in the newly completed Hood Museum of Art.

1987

Citing the "unstable environment" of Parkhurst Hall, the original oil painting of Eleazar Wheelock is duplicated using a special Polaroid camera. The original in rehung in the climate-controlled Hood Museum. The clone hangs in Parkhurst.

1990

An "interactive exhibit" entitled Lair hangs in the Hopkins Center rotunda. As patrons walk through a maze of material that looks like painted window screening, electric eyes activate floodlights and a taped musical score. The other-wordliness of the exhibit is tempered by the laughing faces of students looking in from outside the rotunda's glass wall.

Art imitated life (or did life imitateart?) when Duane Hanson's sculptureappeared in a 1982 Hopkins Centerexhibition. From the Assyrian Reliefs tothe Polaroid Wheelock, there is more toDartmouth s art than meets the eye.