Climate change has brought renewed and urgent interest in the relationship between human behavior and the mass extinction of animal species and their habitats. Early modern Europeans, too, were preoccupied with extinction, and many works of art bear witness to their concerns. Focusing on Antonio Tempesta’s print A Wolf Hunt, with a Dead Ram as Bait, this talk will examine the period’s various notions of extinction, while also drawing connections with contemporary thinking on the subject in museums and elsewhere.
Explore works that are shaped by decay and generated through destruction. This interactive tour looks closely at the beauty that remains in the wake of decay in the Thai sculpture The Standing Buddha (7th–8th century), the bronze Daphne (1930) by sculptor Renée Sintenis, and the painting Legno e Rosso 3 (1956) by Alberto Burri.
In this tour, Harvard student, Adam Sella, explores the action of red, yellow, and blue in three works of art. For red, it’s a panel from Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals (1962); for yellow, the painting A Nayika and Her Lover (c. 1660–70) by an unknown artist from India; and for blue, Pablo Picasso’s Blue period painting Mother and Child (c. 1901). Taking our Forbes Pigment Collection as a springboard, the tour also looks at the material basis of these colors, their history, and their power to stir emotions.
Visitors to the Harvard Museum of Natural History are dazzled by the Mineral Gallery’s beautiful specimens, yet the gallery displays only a fraction of the entire collection.
While each of the collection’s 300,000+ specimens has great scientific value, a subset also has significant commercial value. Join Curator Raquel Alonso-Perez for a virtual behind the-scenes visit to view specimens that, for security reasons, are not typically on display. You’ll see a rare opal in matrix from Mexico, tourmalines from the first pegmatitic discovery in the U.S., and crystalline gold, among...
Harvard’s Kaitlin Hao confronts the history of museum practice through a critical look at three works installed at the Harvard Art Museums: Eight Men Ferrying a Statue of the Buddha (from Mogao Cave 323, Dunhuang, China), a Liberian (Mano) "chief’s mask," and Nature Study by Louise Bourgeois.
Explore the relationship between art and the origins of its creation, looking at different ways in which art objects and artists get removed from their original cultural contexts. This interactive tour looks closely at the seventh-century mural painting Eight Men Ferrying a Statue of the Buddha (from Mogao Cave 323, Dunhuang, China), the sculpture Torso of a Young Girl (1922) by Constantin Brancusi, and the easel painting Jocular Sounds (1929) by Wassily Kandinsky.
In this talk, photography curator Makeda Best will explore the history of photography collecting at Harvard and share her work to foreground new perspectives, contexts of interpretation, and historical connections.
At the time of its founding in 1872, the land on which the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University is sighted was a patchwork of farmland and forest. As the Arboretum was planted, pathways were developed to lead people through the picturesque landscape. As the landscape developed, economies shifted, wars took place, and directors changed. Each of these factors subtly influenced shifts in the park’s path system. Join the Arnold Arboretum on Zoom with Jared Rubinstein as he reveals the layers of change in this beloved landscape.
Examine the tension between nature and artifice in constructions of feminine beauty. She will lead an interactive discussion of Under the Cherry Blossoms, an early 16th-century illustration for The Tale of Genji by Tosa Mitsunobu, and two sculptures by women: Daphne (1930) by Renée Sintenis and Nature Study (1986) by Louise Bourgeois.
Participate in the Arnold Arboretum’s 2021 Tournament of Trees! Get to know this year’s Sweet Sixteen contenders (March 3–9) and cast your votes in this fun bracket style tournament. Let the March Tree Madness games begin.
Nature has long inspired we humans to imagine and create art. Dancers, designers, musicians, painters, and sculptors—they are all found in the natural world. Take this virtual journey through the exhibit galleries of the Harvard Museum of Natural History, where we will reveal intriguing, and often surprising, sources of creativity and connection between the realms of nature and art.
Mei Tercek ’21 explores works that are shaped by decay and generated through destruction. This interactive tour looks closely at the beauty that remains in the wake of decay in the Thai sculpture The Standing Buddha (7th–8th century), the bronze ...
To quote artist Mel Bochner, “Color is what color does.” In this tour, Adam Sella ’22 explores the action of red, yellow, and blue in three works of art. For red, it’s a panel from Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals (1962); for yellow, the painting A Nayika and Her Lover (c. 1660–70) by an unknown artist from India; and for blue, Pablo Picasso’s Blue period painting...
Franklin Hang ’21 explores how artistic periods and traditions have had an impact on the world in ways that exceed bodily limitations. He will lead an interactive discussion of a portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, Emperor Napoleon I by Jacques-Louis David, ...
Sophia Mautz ’21 examines the tensions between nature and artifice in the construction of feminine beauty. She will lead an interactive discussion of the sculptures Nature Study by Louise Bourgeois and Daphne by Renée Sintenis as well as the painting Under the Cherry Blossoms (an illustration for the Tale of Genji) by Tosa Mitsunobu.
Vlad Batagui ’21 explores the relationship between art and the origins of its creation, looking at different ways in which art objects and artists get removed from their original cultural contexts. This interactive tour looks closely at the mural painting Eight Men Ferrying a Statue of the Buddha (from Mogao Cave 323, in Dunhuang, China), the sculpture Torso of a Young Girlby Constantin Brancusi, and...
Alexis Boo ’22 explores works of art that incorporate and manipulate light, rendering it as their medium. This interactive tour featuresLight Prop for an Electric Stage by László Moholy-Nagy, Gare Saint-Lazareby Claude Monet, and Fish and Turtles by Maruyama Ōkyo.
Maeve Miller ’22 will investigate forms of intimacy across the history of art and the tensions between them by looking closely at Summer Scene [Bathers] by Jean Frédéric Bazille, the sculpture Prince Shotoku at Age Two, and The Vanity of the Artist’s Dream by Charles Bird King.
