Opportunities
From lessons and performing groups to labs and makers spaces, from off-campus study and internships to exhibits, concerts and festivals, and more, all Dartmouth students can immerse themselves in the arts.
Campus Arts Centers
At Dartmouth, all roads lead to the Hopkins Center for the Arts. It is the destination for theater-goers and performing artists, for movie fans and art lovers. It’s where students come to create, learn, and connect with each other and with the outside world.
Whether it takes the shape of Assyrian reliefs or an oil painting, a steel-beam sculpture or a single-channel video on a plasma screen, art tells a story. The Hood Museum of Art has nearly 70,000 works of art that span centuries of visual storytelling—stories about people and places; stories about life today and yesterday.
The Black Family Visual Arts Center is home to Studio Art, Film & Media Studies, Digital Humanities and the Loew Auditorium. The building contains classrooms, art galleries, a film screening room, production studios, and administrative offices.
Exhibitions
In addition to the professionally curated exhibitions in galleries at the Hood, students have the opportunity to curate in the Hood as well. Since 2001, the museum has mounted an ongoing series of student-curated mini-exhibitions drawn from the museum’s collections. A Space for Dialogue is a unique aspect of the museum’s senior internship program. Mentored by museum staff, the interns perform independent research, select objects to exhibit, develop their own interpretive strategies, and express their ideas in their own voices.
Festivals
Annual arts festivals including the Digital Arts Expo, Eyewash, Festival of New Musics, Frost and Dodd Play Festival, and VoxFest develop and explore new and innovative works.
Internships and Project Funding
Need funding for your student project in the arts? Students are eligible to apply for project funding from the Hop.
Students can pitch their best ideas and compete for start-up funding from the DALI Lab and the DEN Innovation Center.
The Hood Museum offers curatorial, campus engagement, and Native American art internships to students entering their senior year.
Thinking about graduate school in the visual arts? Every year, five graduating seniors are chosen to remain at Dartmouth for a post-graduate year as Studio Art interns. Each is provided with a studio and small annual stipend. In return they assist in classes, monitor shops, and also serve as role models and mentors for undergraduates. The presence of the interns working at an advanced level helps raise the quality of undergraduate work, and interns gain experience that helps prepare them for graduate school.
Dartmouth’s Center for Professional Development is also a resource for students looking for internship and post-graduate employment in all fields, including the arts.
Laboratories
Catalysts for creativity across campus include the Bregman Media Labs, an interdisciplinary collective of faculty, staff, and students at Dartmouth working in Music, Film and Media, Architecture, Computer Science, Neuroscience, and other disciplines; the DALI Lab -- Digital Arts, Leadership and Innovation Lab -- where students use mindful design to create solutions to a wide variety of problems, and Tiltfactor, Dartmouth’s game design and research lab. Performance labs, offered by the Music Department, provide weekly coaching and instruction in classical, contemporary, and jazz music.
The Visual Arts Design Lab on the first floor of the Black Family Visual Arts Center offers students the opportunity to learn about working with Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, etc., and other photo/video editing software in addition to receiving help on projects. Dartmouth’s Visual Computing Lab covers a broad range of research areas including computational fabrication, light transport simulation, appearance modeling, appearance editing and capture, geometric modeling, architectural design, structural optimization, computer-aided-design interfaces, and digital forensics. The Visual Resource Center holds a vast collection of art works from ancient to contemporary in a variety of media and covers American, European, Asian, and other areas.
The Leslie Center for the Humanities provides grants to faculty to develop Humanities Labs -- coursework that moves beyond the traditional classroom experience typically associated with the humanities to involve some combination of experimentation, observation, hands-on learning, creating new knowledge, public dissemination of that knowledge, and creative production.
Music Lessons
Through the Music Department’s Individual Instruction Program, students can pursue in-depth study in keyboard, woodwinds, brass, strings, percussion and voice for credit.
Off-Campus Study Programs
Off-campus programs are an important extension of Dartmouth’s undergraduate curriculum, offering opportunities to study other cultures and disciplines in depth. From Art History in Rome to Music in Vienna, or from Film Studies in Los Angeles and Edinburgh to Theater in London, these programs are unique opportunities for students to develop their craft while taking advantage of vibrant artistic and cultural scenes.
Performance Opportunities
There are no shortage of opportunities for students who want to perform on campus. The Hop offers a wide variety of co-curricular activities for arts majors and non-majors alike, and all Dartmouth students are eligible to participate on stage or behind the scenes. The Hop produces and presents the work of eight professionally directed student music and dance ensembles. A distinguished professional director leads each ensemble and students often engage deeply with guest artists through residency programs. Ensemble repertoires range from baroque and classical to cutting edge world music and jazz—including the work of composers specially commissioned by the Hop.
Theater is one of the oldest undergraduate activities at Dartmouth. Our production program is built on a tradition dating back as far as 1779. Many production opportunities are available each year - both faculty- or professionally-directed as well as student-directed. Production involvement, both onstage and backstage, is open to all Dartmouth students, regardless of major or the courses in which one is enrolled.
The arts are also well represented among Dartmouth’s more than 350 student organizations.
Public Art
Dartmouth has a distinguished collection of works of public art throughout its campus. Of particular note: The Epic of American Civilization is an extensive mural cycle created by Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco between 1932 and 1934. One of Orozco’s finest creations and one of Dartmouth’s most treasured works, it was designated a national historic landmark in 2013. Ellsworth Kelly’s stunning Dartmouth Panels (2012)—a major site-specific work consisting of five monochromatic aluminum panels, each painted in a single block of radiant color—were designed for the east façade of the Hopkins Center’s Spaulding Auditorium, facing the Black Family Visual Arts Center.
Student Tickets
Special Dartmouth undergraduate and graduate student pricing is available for all Hopkins Center performances and films. World-class artists will never be more accessible! In addition, Dartmouth’s residential communities play host to performances and discussions with visiting artists.
Volunteer Opportunities and Campus Employment
The Hop and the Hood offer a number of student employment opportunities each term. You could be an Arts Ambassador, a Hop program for first-year students where you and fellow arts lovers get free tickets, free food, and behind-the-scenes access. START (Students Teaching in the Arts) matches Dartmouth student volunteers with area 1st-8th grade classrooms. Over six classroom visits, volunteers develop and deliver original arts integration activities that complement regular classroom curriculum, enhancing the learning experience for students. START is active in fall, winter, and spring terms. Or explore the field of arts management in the Hopkins Center Fellows Program. Love film? Help lead the Dartmouth Film Society!
Workshops
Workshops and makerspaces all across campus are places for you to create, collaborate, learn, and be inspired. Explore the Book Arts program in Baker-Berry Library, Ceramics, Jewelry, and Woodworking workshops in the Hopkins Center, and the Machine Shop at the Thayer School of Engineering. The Theater Department’s Costume Shop and Scene Shop provide behind-the-scenes work opportunities for students.