In this workshop, conservation technician Yi Bin Liang, from the museums’ Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, will teach you how to create your own journal with a link stitch binding, involving only needle and thread. This type of simple binding allows the book to lay flat when open, making it perfect for sketching or writing. It’s also a great way for beginners to learn fundamental bookbinding concepts and techniques.
The technique is derived from the Coptic multi-section binding technique used in Egypt as early as the second century CE. Using this method,...
Join us for a hands-on workshop on traditional Chinese brush painting with master brush painter Qingxiong Ma. Enjoy this opportunity to slow down, try your hand at re-creating elements of the natural world, and ponder your connection to the natural environment.
To inspire you before the workshop, visit the Asian art galleries on Level 2 to view the installations The Living Earth in Gallery 2740 and Human vs. Nature in Gallery 2600, both of which feature paintings focused on nature.
Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford St., Cambridge
Dive into the world of Alfred Russel Wallace at this science-packed birthday party. In celebration of the bicentenary of Wallace’s birth, Harvard scholars and guest speakers will introduce his key contributions to our understanding of evolution, biodiversity, and biogeography. While unjustly relegated to a footnote in the Charles Darwin story, Wallace was, in fact, a pioneering biologist in his own right.
Cost: $20 nonmembers / $15 members and Harvard ID holders Ticket includes full access to museum galleries and a special Wallace-themed mocktail...
In this workshop, offered in English on April 16 and in Chinese on April 23, join us first for a tour of the installation of painting manuals led by its curator, Yuhua Ding, the Kemper Assistant Curator of Collections and Academic Affairs at the Davis Museum, Wellesley College, and former Gregory and Maria Henderson Curatorial Fellow in East Asian Art at the Harvard Art Museums. Then we’ll move to the Materials Lab, where master brush painter Qingxiong Ma will guide you in making your own brush painting, inspired by 17th- and 18th-century manuals.
Kivu Ruhorahoza, the 2022-23 McMillan-Stewart Fellow in Distinguished Filmmaking, takes us on an exploration of masculinity through one of its most institutionalized forms: fatherhood. In the film, he figures Rwandan societal debates around the interrogation of fatherhood in a post-genocidal context, one in which the hands that held the machetes and struck, the voices that aided and abetted, the gestures that betrayed and denounced were primarily those of men.
In this two-part workshop, join us first in the exhibition galleries with curator Susanne Ebbinghaus and conservator Kate Smith for a close look at the portraits and learn what our curators, conservators, and scientists have discovered about them. Then take that experience to the Materials Lab, where you’ll make your own version of an ancient tempera painting using some of the same materials and techniques used by Roman-period artists. This workshop aims to honor and remember the woman in the ancient portrait we will copy, and to celebrate the relationship between artist and sitter that...
The Mittal Institute at Harvard University invites you to a concert celebrating 75 years of South Asian independence from British colonial rule. Qawwali is a uniquely South Asian musical tradition that is widely popular in the region and around the world – join us as we commemorate this historic event with one of the region’s most-celebrated Qawwali groups.
Cost: Full Price: $20 / Harvard ID: $10 / All Valid Student IDs: $10
Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, 11 Divinity Ave., Cambridge
Latino/a/x teens in the Hear Me Out/Escúchame project exhibit a group artwork that challenges stereotypes. What is important to know about Salvadoran or Honduran culture? What is overlooked in Mexican, Colombian, or Guatemalan culture? Drop in to see their response, and create “light-up” postcards or an art piece about your identity with simple art materials. Sketch and try other hands-on activities. Take your place with us and share how you want to be represented.
Limited metered parking available on Oxford Street or...
Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, 11 Divinity Ave., Cambridge
The Olmec civilization of ancient Mexico is known for its mysterious sculptures of giant heads that rise up to eleven feet high. Touch a huge modern replica in the museum for one day that is based on Monument One, The King. Explore artifacts with an educator that show Olmec influence on architecture, the ball game, written language, and pigments. Handle reproductions and paint a mini-plaster head of your own to take home.
Workshops also available at 1:45pm and 2:30pm (one hour each)
Registration Deadline: Friday, May 13, 12:00 pm Ages 6–10,...
Peabody Museum Education Room, 11 Divinity Ave., Cambridge
In this special event, Juan Alonso Rodriguez will explain how to make a molinillo, the whisk-like wooden tool that is traditionally used in Mexico to make froth in chocolate beverages. Together with Ana Rita García-Lascuráin, he will discuss the history of chocolate production in Mexico and its current renaissance. Using molinillos, members of the Cambridge-based Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute will make three different chocolate beverages that participants can taste during the program.
Harvard Art Museums, Art Study Center, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge
The Harvard Art Museums Archives is participating in Cambridge Open Archives, an annual event that offers the rare chance to visit a number of unique archives and collecting agencies in Cambridge. In the Art Study Center, select archival photographs, correspondence, and objects documenting the history of the museums’ teaching mission and its wider impact in the United States will be on display for close examination. Archives staff will be on hand to share the stories behind the materials.
Cost: Free with museums admission (note that admission is always free...
In this one-day workshop, master dyer and textile artist Porfirio Gutiérrez will discuss the history and uses of cochineal dye from the perspective of the Zapotecs from Oaxaca, Mexico, who have used the pigment since pre-Columbian times. Mr. Gutiérrez will demonstrate how to prepare cochineal dye and will guide workshop participants in dyeing their individual wool scarves with both cochineal and pericón, a wild marigold indigenous to Mexico, used to obtain a beautiful bright yellow dye.
This is an all-levels workshop; no previous experience is required. All supplies for...
Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, 11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA
Parents and children engage in hands-on activities to learn about the Ju/‘hoansi, the original people of the Kalahari desert, who hunted animals and gathered plant foods as a way of life until they took up farming in 1960.