Author Description

This fully illustrated catalogue chronicles avant-garde artist Wenda Gu’s creation of two installations, united nations: the green house and united nations: united colors, commissioned by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, in partnership with the Dartmouth College Library. Part of the artist’s fourteen-year global conceptual human hair sculpture series, the green house and united colors were made from hair collected from the Dartmouth community, combined with colored hair from other parts of the world. The essays and photographs in the catalogue celebrate the profound scope of the ongoing united nations series as well as the creation and production of these two new works, from community hair collection to the works’ installation and the subsequent local, national, and critical response. Along with Dartmouth’s united nations projects, the Hood Museum of Art premiered Wenda Gu’s forest of stone steles: retranslation and rewriting tang dynasty poetry, a series of large books of rubbings from the artist’s massive stone steles. An essay on this installation, followed by a consideration of Wenda Gu’s work within the global conceptual art movement, completes the volume. Catalogue contributors: Juliette Bianco, Assistant Director, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College; David Cateforis, Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, University of Kansas; Eleanor Heartney, writer and Art in America critic; Allen Hockley, Associate Professor of Asian Art, Dartmouth College; Brian Kennedy, Director, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College.