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, the inaugural Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director of the , plans to retire in June, concluding a 10-year tenure in which he oversaw a and dramatically amplified its impact on campus.

Stomberg shared his retirement plans with the museum’s Board of Advisors and Hood Honorary Council last month, and a search committee for a new director, chaired by Associate Dean of the Faculty for the Arts and Humanities , has been formed.

A specialist in American and European modernist art, Stomberg started his tenure at the Hood in January 2016, just months before the museum, which first opened in 1985, closed to the public for three years for construction. He guided the museum through the expansion, the opening of a satellite exhibition space, a 16-gallery reinstallation, an overhaul of the museum’s brand and visual identity, and the reopening of a new museum and object study center. 

At the Hood, Stomberg has curated 14 exhibitions, selected over 66 works for acquisition, overseen the creation of seven key museum positions, and led the museum in a successful effort to triple its teaching capability. When he retires, Stomberg will have been the Hood Museum’s longest-serving director, and it will have twice as many galleries, double the number of staff, and at least 7,980 more works in the collection than when he first came to ���㽶��Ƶ.

“John Stomberg has paired artistic imagination with pedagogical purpose, advancing the Hood as a national exemplar of the academic art museum,” says . “His decade of stewardship—culminating in a transformative expansion and a tripling of teaching capacity—positions the museum to educate our students and enrich our region for years to come.”

Upon his arrival, Stomberg recognized the educational impact the museum had on campus and the Upper Valley and understood the Hood Museum could not simply go dark during construction. Stomberg worked with ���㽶��Ƶ administration and museum staff to ensure would become a reality. Open for two years, the exhibition space on Main Street hosted eight exhibitions, served dozens of classes, and attracted almost 30,000 visitors.

And since reopening the new Hood Museum of Art in 2019, under Stomberg’s leadership, the museum has seen over 180,000 total visitors, more than 2,100 ���㽶��Ƶ classes have been taught in the Bernstein Center for Object Study, and over 31,000 ���㽶��Ƶ students have visited the museum. In addition, the Hood Museum has served as a popular field trip destination for local schools. Nearly 12,700 elementary and middle school classes have participated in the museum’s ArtStart and Images programs, and more than 8,800 local and regional K–12 students have toured the museum with their school.

“John has the incredible gift of making everyone excited about exhibitions and the Hood Museum’s fabulous collection. His focus on bringing art to the rest of campus has touched art-related and non-art related majors alike,” says Hood Museum of Art Board of Advisors Chair .

“John is a tireless ambassador for the arts at ���㽶��Ƶ, traveling the four corners of the world to engage with students and alumni. On behalf of the Board and art-loving communities of ���㽶��Ƶ, we offer John our deepest gratitude and wish him and his wife Beth the best.”

Stomberg also recognized that the newly expanded building required more specialized staff. In May 2018 the museum welcomed , the first associate curator of Native American art, who now serves as associate director of curatorial affairs and curator of Indigenous art. The same month, the first campus engagement coordinator was hired to foster stronger extracurricular connections between the museum and the ���㽶��Ƶ campus, which produces popular student programs such as Museum Club, Hood After 5, and Student Art Lending at ���㽶��Ƶ. Stomberg also created the first associate curator of photography position and , the inaugural Jane and Raphael Bernstein Curator of East Asian art. He also endorsed and pursued the development of the Mutual Learning Fellows cohort.

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Hood Museum Director John Stomberg and Curator of Indigenous Art Jami Powell discuss a recently acquired work by Athabascan/Iñupiat artist Erica Lord during the 2024 Indian Market in Santa Fe, N.M. (Photo by Alison Palizzolo)

He also has overseen the curatorial process, presentation, promotion, and publishing of numerous landmark exhibitions and publications, including . The groundbreaking exhibition, drawn entirely from the Hood Museum of Art’s collection, was the museum’s first major installation of traditional and contemporary Native American art set alongside early-to-contemporary art by African American, Asian American, Euro-American, and Latin American artists, as well as the first thematic, rather than chronological installation of this work. By incorporating a multitude of artistic responses to the natural world from the early nineteenth century to the present, This Land was one of the first exhibitions in the museum field to pursue a long-overdue broadening of what constitutes “American” art.

Other exhibitions under Stomberg’s tenure have included —the largest and most important exhibition of Aboriginal Australian art mounted in the Western Hemisphere in over 30 years and which debuted at the Hood Museum before touring nationwide. 

The Hood Museum also opened another milestone exhibition, , of contemporary Korean ink painting that included 23 works, many of them monumental in scale and on view in the United States for the first time. 

This past year, , an exhibition curated by Powell celebrating the multiplicity, beauty, and resilience of Native American and Indigenous experiences, debuted at the Hood Museum, receiving national and international acclaim. The show will open at the Phoenix Museum of Art in February 2026.

“The Hood Museum’s ambitious exhibition program has always balanced art that is new with the old, from near and far—and that commitment to breadth provides opportunities for us to learn about the important role that art plays in enriching lives,” Stomberg says.

He has also been a champion of the Hood Museum’s publishing program. Under Stomberg’s leadership, the curatorial team has been directed to expand areas of the Hood Museum’s collection that were previously underdeveloped, including acquiring global work by artists in underrepresented groups. His first two acquisitions were objects by female Black artists. In 2016, he acquired and soon after Nigerian artist Toyin Ojih Odutola’s Writ Large (2016). Other significant acquisitions include , a commissioned work by , , , and .

Growing the breadth and footprint of ���㽶��Ƶ’s outdoor sculpture on campus has also been a focus of Stomberg’s. The goal of his vision of a “curated campus” is for students, faculty, staff, and visitors to have accidental encounters with art on a regular basis. He recently acquired for the west end of campus. During his time on the public art committee, Stomberg also led the acquisition of and .

Before coming to ���㽶��Ƶ, Stomberg was the Florence Finch Abbott Director of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum and the Joseph Allen Skinner Museum from 2011 to 2015. He had also worked at the Williams College Museum of Art as its deputy director and chief curator, and as director of the Boston University Art Gallery. He holds a BA from Georgetown University and an MA and PhD in art history from Boston University. He is also a founding instructor at Hampshire College’s Institute for Curatorial Practice.

In addition to Boggs, the search committee includes:

• Mary Lou Aleskie, Howard Gilman ’44 Executive Director, Hopkins Center for the Arts
• Paul Christesen, William R. Kenan Professor of Ancient Greek History and Chair, Department of Classics
• Mary K. Coffey, Professor of Art History, Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies
• Nathaniel Dominy, Charles Hansen Professor of Anthropology and Chair, Department of Anthropology
• Amelia Kahl, Barbara C. & Harvey P. Hood 1918 Senior Curator of Academic Programming, Hood Museum of Art
• Brooke Minto, Executive Director and CEO, Columbus Museum of Art, Hood Museum Board of Advisors
• Kate Norton ’01, Assistant Vice President for Advancement for Centers, Institutes, and Special Projects
• Jane Novak ’92, ���㽶��Ƶ Board of Trustees
• Ramie Speicher, Business Officer, Hood Museum of Art
• Tricia Treacy, Professor and Chair, Department of Studio Art
• Steven Tseng ’95, Tuck ’01, Chair, Hood Museum Board of Advisors

Stomberg will stay on as director through June, and then retire to the Berkshires in western Massachusetts.

“Over my years at the Hood Museum, we have created a blockbuster staff with some of the most talented and creative folks in the field. I am looking forward to seeing what they have in store for the next chapter in the Hood’s celebrated story,” he says.