Worth a Thousand Words

The history of Dartmouth art is determined by brushstrokes of fate.

1793

Joseph Steward's commission to paint a portrait of Eleazar Wheelockis easier said than done; the Dartmouth founder has been dead for 14 years. Steward hires a Wheelock double to pose.

1857

Austin Wright sends the College the Assyrian Reliefs. Dartmouth awards him an honorary degree.

1894

The College obtains its requisite Egyptian mummy.

1934

President Ernest Martin Hopkins 'O1 defends the Orozco Murals, but he objects to the depiction of New England schoolchildren. "There never was a group of children in New England, either in Puritan times or since, that looked anything like this group of Scandinavian squareheads," he says.

1937

After the furor over Orozco dies down, Walter Beach Humphrey '14 depicts topless women and drunken Indians in an interpretation of the song "Eleazar Wheelock."

1945

"Never have anything to do with murals," Hopkins advises incoming President John Sloan Dickey '29.

1975

"Art History professors possess the most extensive and esoteric vocabulary of multisyllable words to be found outside of Webster's dictionary," reports the student course guide.

1988

An eight-foot-tall, 14-footlong abstract collage entitled Battered City is accidentally hung upside down at the Top of the Hop. The Hop director, who is the only person on campus who has seen the piece before, notices. The work is flipped.

1989

Art worth thousands of dollars disappears from College buildings. Members of Sphinx admit to the heists, explaining that they were part of a scavenger hunt.

1993

Humphrey's murals are added to the Hood's collection. "I wouldn't consider them masterpieces, but I wouldn't dispute someone who likes them," says museum director Timothy Rub.

1996

The Hood's collection includes four shrunken heads. One is a fake. Two are real. No one is sure if the fourth is authentic or not.

The Rape of the Sabines is the only known mural of Theodor Seuss Geisel '25. The Dartmouth Club of New York commissioned the work to decorate the bar. Today it is part of the Hood's collection.