Face to Watch

Coming to Dartmouth's Hood Museum from the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in New York, Reservation X brings home the art of Mateo Romero '89 (see his painting When Thunder Being Woman Left Me on page 49). After showing extensively across the United States, Romero joins with six other Native-American artists in an exhibit that explores the reservation as a metaphor. His Painted Caves, modeled on the Painted Caves Shrine in Bandelier National Monument in northern New Mexico, covers four themes: physical and spiritual migration, transportation, and the evolution of symbols from simple handprints into written text and scanned bar codes. The mural "is about the past, about connection and about a sense of my community," says Romero, a member of the Cochiti Pueblo, in the exhibition catalog. "Hopefully, the work touches the human condition." Romero was on campus in October for a series of classroom and public lectures. Reservation X remains at the Hood through December 16.