Events

    John Hejduk Soundings Lecture: Mario Carpo, “Generative AI, Imitation, Style, and the Eternal Return of Precedent”

    Location: 

    Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall Piper Auditorium

    Generative AI does not create new images out of thin air; it generates images that have a “certain something” in common with a selection of images we have fed into it. This selection, often called a “dataset,” can be generic or custom-made; either way, Generative AI automates the imitation and replication of some of its common visual features, often known in the past as styles. Imitation was for centuries the backbone of the classical tradition in European art, and it was de facto banned by 20th-century modernism for many good reasons. As the rise of Generative AI is bringing the...

    Read more about John Hejduk Soundings Lecture: Mario Carpo, “Generative AI, Imitation, Style, and the Eternal Return of Precedent”

    Black Bell: A Quartet for the End of Time

    Location: 

    Harvard Radcliffe Institute—Online

    A presentation from 2023–2024 Mary I. Bunting Institute Fellow Alison C. Rollins

    At Radcliffe, Rollins is completing her second poetry collection, titled "Black Bell," and a nonfiction essay collection of biomythology, titled "Outdoors." She will also develop a series of performance art pieces in conversation with Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time and historical examples of Black fugitivity such as Henry Box Brown and Lear Green, figures who, hidden in crates, shipped themselves from slaveholding states to free states. Thinking through frequencies...

    Read more about Black Bell: A Quartet for the End of Time

    Dear Mothership: Poems

    Location: 

    Harvard Radcliffe Institute—Online

    A presentation from 2023–2024 Mary I. Bunting Institute Fellow Marcus Wicker

    At Radcliffe, Wicker is completing "Dear Mothership," a book of poetry that uses speculative narrative, empathy, and a hip hop aesthetic to explore reparations and examine the confounding ways humans treat one another when empowered by history and inheritance. He will also begin work on a book of lyric essays about barbershops, Black music, and belonging.

    ...

    Read more about Dear Mothership: Poems

    On Narrative, Violence, and Migration

    Location: 

    Harvard Radcliffe Institute—Online

    Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi will present a lecture on the intersections of migration, narrative, and violence based on her seminal craft essay on the works of Yiyun Li, James Baldwin, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.

    Learn more and RSVP.

    Gallery Talk: The Musical Materiality of Nam Jun Paik’s Electronic Opera #1

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    Join program assistant Shirley Hunt to explore the role of recorded music in Nam Jun Paik’s audiovisual work Electronic Opera #1. An accomplished musician and independent scholar, Hunt will share insights into the history, cultural context, and interpretation of musical material used in the creation of this artwork.

    ...

    Read more about Gallery Talk: The Musical Materiality of Nam Jun Paik’s Electronic Opera #1

    Water Stories with the Artist Alia Farid

    Location: 

    Johnson-Kulukundis Family Gallery, Byerly Hall, 8 Garden St., Cambridge

    Join the artist Alia Farid for a tour of Water Stories: River Goddesses, Ancestral Rites, and Climate Crisis and a discussion of the artwork Chibayish, 2023. Chibayish is part of a larger group of works that Farid has developed since 2018, focused on the impact of extractive industries on southern Iraq and Kuwait's ecological and social fabric.

    ...

    Read more about Water Stories with the Artist Alia Farid

    Art Study Center Seminar: Versos and Marks—Exploring the Past of Paintings

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    Join curatorial assistant Casey Monahan to explore how investigating the verso (reverse side) of a painting can sometimes help construct the history and provenance of a work. Monahan will share how details such as labels, numbers, and other elements that are normally “unseen” are essential for curators as they research and catalogue works in the collections.

    ...

    Read more about Art Study Center Seminar: Versos and Marks—Exploring the Past of Paintings

    Gallery Talk: Visible and Invisible Colors in Ancient Greek and Roman Art (Chinese)

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    Which colors did ancient Greek and Roman artists use, and how have we discovered their choices? What is polychromy, and how does it influence our understanding of the ancient world? This talk explores both the overt and covert colors within our ancient art collection, with a special emphasis on Greek vase paintings, marble sculpture, and Roman wall paintings.

    ...

    Read more about Gallery Talk: Visible and Invisible Colors in Ancient Greek and Roman Art (Chinese)

    Gallery Talk: Activation of Moholy-Nagy’s Light Prop for an Electric Stage

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    Our galleries are full of stories—this series of talks gives visitors a chance to hear the best ones! The talks highlight new works on view, take a fresh look at old favorites, investigate artists’ materials and techniques, and reveal the latest discoveries by curators, conservators, fellows, visiting artists, technologists, and other contributors.

    Join staff as they discuss and activate this experimental device from 1930 by László Moholy-Nagy, a Bauhaus pioneer.

    ...

    Read more about Gallery Talk: Activation of Moholy-Nagy’s Light Prop for an Electric Stage

    Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife

    Location: 

    Harvard Radcliffe Institute—Online

    A presentation from 2023–2024 Evelyn Green Davis Fellow Francesca Wade

    At Radcliffe, Wade is completing her second book, "Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife," a new biography of Stein told through the story of her posthumous legacy. She will also begin work on a new project, exploring the intersecting lives and work of several women poets and activists in 1970s New York.

    ...

    Read more about Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife

    Objects of Addiction: Collecting Chinese Art—Past, Present, and Future

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    Why do the Harvard Art Museums have a collection of Chinese art? In conjunction with the exhibition Objects of Addiction: Opium, Empire, and the Chinese Art Trade, curators and specialists will explore early collecting of Chinese art in Massachusetts, historical interpretations of cultural heritage, and how contemporary museum collecting practices have changed and will continue to change in the future.

    ...

    Read more about Objects of Addiction: Collecting Chinese Art—Past, Present, and Future

    Water Stories with the Artist Evelyn Rydz

    Location: 

    Johnson-Kulukundis Family Gallery, Byerly Hall, 8 Garden St., Cambridge

    Join the artist and educator Evelyn Rydz for an afternoon of conversation and collective artmaking within the exhibition Water Stories: River Goddesses, Ancestral Rites, and Climate Crisis, on view September 18–December 16, 2023.

    The exhibition presents artworks that tell alternative stories of water experience in the context of climate change, while encouraging viewers to appreciate the multivalent meaning of water and their own relationship to it. Rydz has repeatedly observed the increasing impacts on natural and cultural ecosystems throughout her various field...

    Read more about Water Stories with the Artist Evelyn Rydz

    Gallery Talk—Objects of Addiction: Opium, Empire, and the Chinese Art Trade

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    Join curator Sarah Laursen for a closer look at artworks in the exhibition Objects of Addiction: Opium, Empire, and the Chinese Art Trade (September 15, 2023–January 14, 2024). The exhibition explores the entwined histories of the opium trade and the Chinese art market between the late 18th and early 20th centuries. Laursen will share how these two commodities—acquired through both legal and illicit means—have had a lasting impact on the global economy, public health, immigration law, education, and the arts.

    ...

    Read more about Gallery Talk—Objects of Addiction: Opium, Empire, and the Chinese Art Trade

    Gallery Talk: A Tale of Two Vessels

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    Join curatorial assistant Casey Monahan to explore how two 19th-century ceramic vessels tell different stories of the United States. One vessel is made by enslaved potter David Drake and shows us both the artist’s agency and the lack of it. The other vessel is a presentation vase created for the U.S. centennial; it includes narrative imagery intended to evoke a shared American identity after the Civil War.

    ...

    Read more about Gallery Talk: A Tale of Two Vessels

    Aga Khan Program Lecture: Catherine Mosbach, "Design is a Language: Being Receptive, Being in Motion"

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium (48 Quincy St., Cambridge)

    Drawing works both ways. Behind the outline, there is a goal to be reached: to give visibility to the masses in the process of being produced. It is only a revelation of possibilities. It is clearly the outline that produces the narrative. The masses evolve at their own pace, whether micro or macro. The outlines are a matter of a 'self,' of a 'singular' that exposes itself to the 'multiple;' for the time being, we don’t know about tomorrow.

    What would be our sensitive imprint if we gave up on interpretation, in other words, on the subtle interplay between the eye,...

    Read more about Aga Khan Program Lecture: Catherine Mosbach, "Design is a Language: Being Receptive, Being in Motion"

Pages