HANOVER, N.H.- The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College presents Protest in Paris 1968: Photographs by Serge Hambourg, featuring thirty-five photographs, many displayed for the first time. Serge Hambourg, a French photojournalist, took these images while working for the Parisian weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur. On view through November 19, 2006, the exhibition provides an eyewitness account of the events of May 1968 in Paris, when student and worker strikes against the political and social establishment brought the country to a standstill. Barricades went up, arrests were made, and street fighting and other violence roiled France during a time of similar protests around the world.

Opening events will be held on Friday, October 6, at 4:30 p.m. in the Arthur M. Loew Auditorium. M. Anne Sa'adah, co-curator of the exhibition and Joel Parker Professor of Law and Political Science, Department of Government at Dartmouth College, will present Perspectives on May 1968. A reception hosted by the Friends of Hopkins Center and Hood Museum of Art will follow in Kim Gallery.

Other programming highlights will include the screening of two 1972 films by French director Jean-Luc Godard. Letter to Jane (1972, France, 51 mins) and Tout va Bien (1972, France, 95 minutes) will be shown in Loew Auditorium on Saturday, November 11, at 2:00 p.m. Lynn Higgins, Chair of French and Italian at Dartmouth College, will introduce the films and lead a brief discussion afterward.

The year 1968 was a pivotal year in the political, social, and cultural history of not only the United States and France but also other countries across the globe. It was a time of protest, war, and political violence and upheaval. One of the major events of 1968 occurred in France, where in May students and workers demonstrated in Paris against the conservative government of General Charles de Gaulle. Through the photographs in this exhibition, one can feel the groundswell of the events of early May and the energy of the youthful student leaders as they galvanized the demonstrators. Hambourg also captured images of the backlash by supporters of de Gaulle in a demonstration on May 30. A consummate photographer, Hambourg used his keen eye and artistic sense to represent events that still reverberate almost forty years later.

Serge Hambourg is an independent photographer who in the 1960s and 1970s worked for the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur (1966­69) and the newspaper Le Figaro (1973­77). He has also worked as a producer of television films and as a publicity photographer for advertising agencies. His photographs have been produced in Paris Match, New York Magazine, Time, Vogue, Le Monde, Art in America, Fortune, Architectural Record, and elsewhere. His works are in the collections of museums such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the New-York Historical Society, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College. From 1977 through 1992, Serge Hambourg lived in New York City. He currently lives and works in Paris.

This exhibition was organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, and was generously funded by the Parnassus Foundation, courtesy of Jane and Raphael Bernstein. An illustrated catalogue distributed by the University Press of New England (UPNE) accompanies this exhibition, with contributions by M. Anne Sa'adah, Joel Parker Professor of Law and Political Science at Dartmouth College, and Thomas Crow, Director of the Getty Research Institute, Getty Center, Los Angeles, and Professor of the History of Art, University of Southern California.