If you drive past Dartmouth’s Organic Farm, you’ll likely see a large-scale mural set against a white barn. Titled Sustainability and Solidarity, this monumental work celebrates the importance of labor in the Upper Valley’s agriculture and dairy industries, and was the result of a term-long effort spearheaded by Professor Douglas Moody and his LATS 37 course “Migrant Lives and Labor in the Upper Valley: Latinx Studies for Community Engagement.”
Offered this past spring, the course introduced students to the cultural, social, and political issues surrounding migrant dairy farm labor through a combination of in-class readings, films, and community engagements at local dairy farms. They also learned about muralism and the power of art to inspire social change through visits to Dartmouth’s Orozco Murals and the Hood Museum’s galleries.
“From the very beginning, I wanted my students to be thinking about art — about the impact art can have on a viewer and how it can inspire people to think and question,” said Professor Moody.
At the start of the term, students visited the Orozco Room in Baker-Berry Library to see José Clemente Orozco’s The Epic of American Civilization. Painted during Orozco’s residency on campus from 1932–1934, the murals “inspired students to not only think about the long tradition of mural art at Dartmouth, but how they could make their own contributions,” said Moody.
A few weeks later, the students came over to the Hood Museum’s galleries to look at works on view that could generate conversations about land use, social justice, and Indigeneity. Curator of Academic Programming Amelia Kahl and I were intentional in selecting a variety of objects that could introduce students to different artistic styles from a range of time periods.
The students viewed:
Régis François Gignoux’s New Hampshire (White Mountain Landscape) (about 1864), a sweeping vista of the White Mountains;
Regionalist artist Paul Sample’s Beaver Meadow (1939), a celebration of the distinctive topography and societal manners associated with rural Vermont;
Jaune Quick‑to‑See Smith’s monumental Trade Canoe: Forty Days and Forty Nights (2015), a painterly and cacophonous composition brimming with allusion — from art history, the Bible, and Salish creation stories;
Enrique Chagoya’s Utopian Cannibal.org (2000), a satirical critique of global capitalism and its violent roots;
Anita Fields’ When Referencing the Earth and Sky (2019), a textured landscape created with clay, slips, and glaze that references the Euro-American landscape painting tradition and Indigenous world views; and
Ruben Olguin’s Retablos series (2019), which borrows from the Spanish colonial tradition of retablo painting to map Indigenous territories and waterways.
According to Moody, these experiences with art early in the term served as a launchpad — a starting point that allowed the class to think collectively about how to visually communicate issues of labor, food, regional history, Latinx, and Indigenous culture and identities.
With the help of two professional artists, Ernesto Cuevas ’98 and Marina Massidda ’17, the students put their ideas to canvas. Cuevas and Massidda led a four-day intensive mural painting workshop and students from LATS 37 and Professor Moody’s Spanish 7 course “Transforming Public Space: Mural Art in Mexico and the United States” rolled up their sleeves and picked up paintbrushes.
The impressive result is now featured on the side of a white barn on the Organic Farm. If you go see it, make sure to note the direct nod to Orozco’s Mural. The “Modern Industrial Man” painted onto Orozco’s final panel has been recast in the Organic Farm Mural, now enjoying a book at the bank of the Connecticut River.
Learn more about the project by watching this video created by Dartmouth’s Office of Communications:
(Video by Chris Johnson and Robert Gill.)
The mural project was supported by the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning (DCAL) and an Experiential Learning Initiative grant, by the Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies (LALACS) Program, the Leslie Center for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Center, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and by the Ethics Institute at Dartmouth.
This post was authored by: Isadora Italia, Campus Engagement Coordinator
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Isadora Italia joined the Hood Museum of Art in May 2018. As Campus Engagement Coordinator, she develops strategies for increasing the museum’s interaction with campus audiences. Her work involves leading the Museum Club student program, organizing events for campus audiences, and overseeing the museum’s social media channels. Before joining the Hood Museum staff, she connected young professionals and rising leaders through social and educational experiences as the DC Community Director for IVY. Prior to that, she supported education programs at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Yale Center for British Art. Isadora graduated from Yale University in 2014.
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