On July 12, Colin Donnelly ’24 discussed his exhibition “Embracing Vulnerability: Gay Intimacy in the Context of AIDS,” the 119th student-curated art exhibition of the Hood Museum of Art’s “A Space for Dialogue” series. The 45-minute event took place at the museum, drawing a large audience of both Dartmouth and other community members.
The exhibition included work from eight different artists, including pieces from Andy Warhol. The pieces depict queer intimacy and “resistance” to stigmas against gay men during the AIDs epidemic, according to Donnelly.
Donnelly, a Class of 1954 programming intern at the Hood, graduated with a geography major modified with government in June. His undergraduate senior geography thesis, titled “Shifting Forms: Queer Placemaking Amidst Neoliberalism In New York City Through Art,” served as inspiration for the exhibition, he said. Hood Foundation curator of education Neely McNulty was Donnelly’s primary advisor on the exhibition.
“I looked at site-specific queer art in New York City … focusing on public installations, museums and non-profit spaces,” Donnelly said. “I then interviewed a lot of artists … about how [they] relate to their own personal histories through their art, as well as the histories of the city.”
The “A Space for Dialogue” series allows Hood interns to curate pieces from the museum’s permanent collection and gain hands-on experience in curation. Since 2001, students have put together more than 100 exhibitions, according to senior curator of academic programming of the Hood Amelia Kahl ’01.
Donnelly said he aimed to represent as “many communities as possible” in the exhibition while maintaining a “personal feel” by emphasizing queer male intimacy, reflecting his own experience as a gay man.
“I believe that art is deeply personal,” Donnelly said. “I think that although focusing on the individual may sound like a very ‘capitalist’ notion, it can actually remind people of the personal experiences amidst these sweeping losses.”
Jess T. Dugan’s photograph collection, “Every Breath We Drew,” “recenters queerness on the intimate connection between people,” according to the exhibition’s brochure.
One of the photographs Donnelly selected from Dugan’s collection for his exhibit, “Collin (red room),” features a young Black man standing shirtless in a crimson room. The photograph captures an intimate bathroom scene: the edge of a clawfoot bathtub creeps into the left side of the photo, as Collin holds a red bath towel precariously below his waist, suggesting potential further disrobing.
Upper Valley resident and former employee of the College Karen Blum, who attended the opening, said she was “very drawn” to Dugan’s piece.
“I think there’s something in the [photo] that I can’t exactly place,” she said. “There’s a little sadness, but also some ‘I've got this,’ too. … The colors are also just stunningly lovely.”
Her spouse, Al Blum, said he was “particularly delighted” that Donnelly focused on queer intimacy in his exhibition, since the topic is often overlooked in the art world.
Two photographs from Fox’s “Paul Cadmus and Jon Anderson” collection also were featured in the exhibition. The black and white photographs feature a couple — Paul and Jon — in various poses, embracing.
At the time the photo was taken, the couple had been together for more than 60 years, according to Donnelly. Situated in the context of the AIDs epidemic, Fox — who sat down with Donnelly a day prior to the exhibition — said that taking this photograph was “like finding a little oasis of just the two of them.” Fox added that he was “very glad” to have been involved with the project and appreciated Donnelly’s “effusion.”
Kahl — who manages the Hop’s senior interns— said it was “delightful” to work with Donnelly on his exhibition.
“He was bursting with ideas and just needed a little bit of help to … narrow in those ideas,” Kahl said. “The show came from a deep intellectual and a deep personal interest, which made it really rewarding and fulfilling to work with him.”
David Walter McDermott and Peter Thomas McGough’s “The Artists’ Palette 1882” is the largest and “most sexually explicit” piece in the exhibition, according to Donnelly. The piece’s inspiration came from an 1880s art magazine with the same name and prominently features a gay porn scene.
Painted in an era when sex between men was “completely under attack,” Donnelly said the piece represents “a queering of history.”
“Even amidst the attacks on queer male sexuality [during the AIDS epidemic], queer male intimacy has never stopped,” Donnelly said. “It has always been a desirable thing, something that is really intimate and personal.”
John Kirk — a frequent donor to the Hood Museum and prominent art scholar — and independent curator Trevor Fairbrother gifted “The Artists’ Palette 1882” to the Hood, according to Donnelly. Kirk praised Donnelly’s curation work during the Q&A portion of the exhibition.
The piece had been “in [his] house for years” before donating it, along with “150 other pieces,” to the museum in 2012, Kirk said. Since then, “The Artists’ Palette 1882” has been in storage. Kirk thanked Donnelly for “finally pulling it out of the closet.”
While explaining the meaningful friendships reflected in the exhibition, Donnelly underscored the importance of queerness as “community more broadly.”
“I think the aesthetic can really easily be coopted by consumerist mechanisms and queerness can be very trendy,” Donnelly said. “Focusing on the intimacy and human connection in any form, whether its platonic … or literally a gay sex scene, is a really important reminder that queerness is caring between people.”
Daniela Maksin ’26, a close friend of Donnelly who attended the talk, said he did “an amazing job” on the exhibition, “particularly because he was able to weave in such a personal narrative.”
“The exhibit was … so special because it felt like it had so much of him in it, but also because it felt so global and universal and it spoke so thoughtfully about such an important historical period,” Maksin said. “It is so important to me to see something that he worked for so long to finally come to fruition and to see him be so supported by family and friends and fellow staff members is just so awesome.”
The exhibition will be on display from July 13 to Sept. 1.
