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.
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.
How wild, really, is Albert Bierstadt’s wilderness in Rocky Mountains, "Lander’s Peak"? Curatorial intern Saffron Sener will discuss this American landscape.
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.
Artists "double" their visual worlds by creating artworks within artworks. Curator Miriam Stewart will explore how these artists create intriguing interactions between painter, subject, and viewer.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium (48 Quincy St., Cambridge)
The lecture presents Dogma's research of the longhouse, the linear, long, and narrow habitation typology that existed and still exists in many parts of the world, including South-East Asia, Europe, and North America. While there are numerous scholarly investigations of specific cases of longhouses, a comparative study of this ubiquitous type of habitation is missing. This lacuna is both surprising and understandable. It is surprising because the longhouse is among the most ubiquitous forms of pre-modern dwellings. Alternatively, it is comprehensible because the longhouse represents a...
Online or at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Knafel Center, 10 Garden St., Cambridge
This conference, “Responsibility and Repair”—led by Harvard University’s Native American Program in collaboration with Harvard Radcliffe Institute—will bring together Native and university leaders to advance a national dialogue, expand research, and establish and deepen partnerships with Indigenous communities. Using the landmark Report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery (2022) as a starting point, the conference and its participants—activists, scholars, Native leaders, tribal historians, and others—will explore the responsibility of...
Online or at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Knafel Center, 10 Garden St., Cambridge
This conference, “Responsibility and Repair”—led by Harvard University’s Native American Program in collaboration with Harvard Radcliffe Institute—will bring together Native and university leaders to advance a national dialogue, expand research, and establish and deepen partnerships with Indigenous communities. Using the landmark Report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery (2022) as a starting point, the conference and its participants—activists, scholars, Native leaders, tribal historians, and others—will explore the responsibility of...
Houghton Library welcomes conservator Julia Miller, editor of the Suave Mechanicals history of bookbinding series, who will give this fall's Philip and Frances Hofer Lecture on the Art of the Book.
The lecture covers the inception of Suave Mechanicals, its goals and challenges, with a brief description of how the series is managed—the nuts and bolts of editing and publishing nine volumes of essays over twelve years (2013–2025). Miller describes the series' impact on research and writing on the history of bookbinding and the history of the book, as viewed through its broad...
Houghton Library and the Standing Committee on Medieval Studies present Christopher Baswell on "Arthurian Immobilities: Disabled Kings and Nobles in the Lancelot Prose Cycle."
While the lived reality of disability in the Middle Ages was surely a wretched one, at the same time we encounter persistent associations between disabled and royal or aristocratic bodies in medieval culture, its imagery, and narratives. Nowhere is this truer than in the Arthurian world, at whose core there lies a powerful but immobile figure, the Rich Fisher King. In this talk, Christopher Baswell will...
Online or at Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge
“Oh Unas, you have not gone away dead, but alive.” The Pyramid Text quoted here tells us that the ancient Egyptians believed in the continued influence of the dead in the lives of the living. The dead in ancient Egypt were supernatural intermediaries, folk heroes, and some were even deified, worshiped as gods in the Egyptian pantheon.
This talk will build on the research found in Dr. Troche’s first book, Death, Power, and Apotheosis in Ancient Egypt (Cornell University Press, 2021) and invite audiences to learn about the spectrum of deceased actors in ancient Egypt....
Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium (48 Quincy St., Cambridge)
This lecture explores how developments in the earth sciences—specifically geology, evolutionism, and biogeography—ushered in advances in design methodologies for large public–realm landscapes in late nineteenth-century Boston.
Speaker: Anita Berrizbeitia Berrizbeitia is a Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She served as Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture between 2015-2022 and as Program Director of the Master in Landscape Architecture Degree Programs between 2012-2015. Her research explores...
Join Jen Thum and Caitlin Clerkin for a conversation about a recently refreshed display of ancient Egyptian reliefs from tombs, which places the spotlight on ancient people and processes, as well as provenance.
In conjunction with the exhibition Objects of Addiction: Opium, Empire, and the Chinese Art Trade, join the Harvard Art Museums for a discussion about the opioid crisis, featuring specialists in addiction medicine, harm reduction, and public health policy.
Join associate curator Sarah Laursen for a lecture on opium and Chinese art—two influential commodities traded in China, the British Empire, and Massachusetts between the 18th and early 20th centuries.