A total of 65,000 unique objects, ranging from thousands of Oceanic artifacts given to the museum in the early 1990s to the mastodon molar bequeathed to the Young Museum of Dartmouth in 1772, are stored on shelves in the Hood's storage facilities.
These objects are maintained at the Bernstein Study Storage Center, home to 99 percent of the Hood's permanent collection while it is not on display in the museum.
Just because works are not in an exhibit does not mean they are unavailable. "A number of the most important works are indeed looked at quite a bit," said Hart.
Nearly 600 students taking courses ranging from Comparative Literature to Native American studies went into the permanent collections and studied objects during Winter term of 2002 alone.
Any Dartmouth student may study the objects there firsthand. The Hood is unique in supplying "access to things you pretty much couldn't have at a larger university," said Derrick Cartwright, Director of the Hood Museum.
The collection spans the globe; the museum's collections of American portraits and landscape paintings and its holdings of American and European prints, drawings and watercolors are especially noteworthy, as is its collection of Oceanic art.
One of the more intriguing objects in the permanent collection is tucked into Study Storage.
Theodor Seuss Geisel '25's easel painting in storage at the Hood, "Rape of the Sabine Women," depicts figures in his distinctive cartoon style which foreshadow later Dr. Seuss creations such as Horton of "Horton Hears a Who" fame.
The painting's central image is of a helmeted, bare-chested man carrying a woman slung over his shoulder. Passing students spanked the woman's bottom so many times during an earlier, more publicly accessible phase of the painting's life that the paint is about to chip off the canvas.
What Cartwright called the Hood's "strong reputation for great art" has inspired many museums to seek objects on loan for exhibitons.
The museum lends works to about a dozen others each year, on the condition that lent works will be properly cared for, and that the piece will greatly benefit the exhibition.
A piece that is "on tour" is almost always kept in Hanover for a few consecutive years afterwards.
Cartwright commented that students lose valuable learning opportunities if a work is gone from the Hood for all four years of their time at Dartmouth.
The permanent collection serves as the backbone of the museum, and objects are rotated regularly into displays within the regular museum and into special exhibitions.
Some very recently acquired works are currently on display, including John Wilson's "Martin Luther King, Jr.", one of the Hood's most recent acquisitions, which was featured during Dartmouth's recent Martin Luther King Day celebrations.
An upcoming exhibit of Rembrandt's works in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts will include three prints from the Hood, considered among the best of their kind in the world.
New objects are added to the collection as gifts of alumni or through the Hood endowment, which is similarly funded by alumni. Curators are enabled to make discretionary purchases and through purchases by acquisition. At least 100 new pieces are added a year and often many more than that.
"One of the goals is to keep building the depth of the collection," said Cartwright, a point he later illustrated by displaying a pair of East African artifacts which would strengthen that aspect of the collection. "We are stewards of cultural property, and we want the students to have the chance to see a bunch of different exhibits while they are here."
