2022 May 24
On the Move: 17th-Century Dutch Artists and Their Travels
4:00pm to 5:30pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge
Living through the COVID-19 pandemic over the past two years has prompted renewed appreciation of the excitement and pleasures, as well as the challenges and dangers, of travel. In this lecture, we’ll learn about the experiences 17th-century Dutch draftsmen had to face as they journeyed from their studios to places near and far. Jane Shoaf Turner will focus on drawings by artists who traveled beyond the Dutch Republic’s borders—across the Channel to England, north and east to Germany and Scandinavia, south to France, over the Alps to Italy, and across the Atlantic to Brazil.
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2022 May 20
In-Person Exhibition Tour: White Shadows: Anneliese Hager and the Camera-less Photograph
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge
Join curator Lynette Roth and curatorial assistant Bridget Hinz for an in-depth tour of our special exhibition White Shadows: Anneliese Hager and the Camera-less Photograph, on view through July 31, 2022.
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2022 May 10
Gallery Talk: Anna Atkins’s Botanical Cyanotypes—Camera-less Photography and Scientific Discovery in the 19th Century
12:30pm to 1:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge
This talk will highlight the work and artistic process of Anna Atkins (1799–1871), creator of the first photographically illustrated book. It will also explore the importance of Atkins's photograms to scientific research and documentation in the 19th century.
 
This talk is offered in conjunction with the exhibition White Shadows: Anneliese Hager and the Camera-less Photograph, on view at the Harvard Art Museums through July 31,...
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2022 Apr 27
In-Person Gallery Talk: Ella Hurd’s Botanical Cyanotypes—Camera-less Photography and Scientific Discovery in the 19th Century
12:30pm to 1:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge
The talk will highlight amateur botanist Ella Hurd and the process she used to make her cyanotypes. It will also explore the importance of camera-less photography to scientific research and documentation in the 19th century.
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2022 Apr 21
In-Person Gallery Talk: Washington and the Power of Clothes
12:30pm to 1:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge
Join curator Horace D. Ballard for fresh perspective on two of the museums’ iconic portraits of George Washington through the meaning of gesture and the materialities of fashion. Inspired by Ballard’s recent research on Washington and his rewriting of the portraits’ gallery labels, the talk will explore the important role artists played in shaping the nation’s sense of self after the partisan politics of the Revolutionary War.
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2022 Apr 14
The Trouble with Tragedy: Imagining the Native American Past, Present, and Future
6:00pm to 7:30pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge
The Harvard University Native American Program (HUNAP) and the Harvard Art Museums present a lecture by author David Treuer.
David Treuer, an Ojibwe Indian, will offer a fresh and in-depth perspective on the current state of affairs for Native and Indigenous peoples in the Americas. Drawing from his experience growing up on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota and as an accomplished academic, Treuer’s work includes both nonfiction and fiction.
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2022 Apr 09
In-Person Gallery Talk: Art and Human Health—An Evolutionary Perspective
12:30pm to 1:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge
Join Ben Sibson, a graduate student at Harvard in human evolutionary biology, for a conversation about how art can enhance our understanding of the evolution of human health. Looking at works of art installed in the University Study Gallery this semester for the undergraduate course Human Evolution and Human Health, Sibson will show how the objects provide useful information about the physical activities performed by people across time and space, as well as the foods they ate, the clothes they wore, and the spaces where they lived.
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2020 Sep 23
Leaving New Orleans: A Personal Urban History
12:00pm
Location: 
Online—Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard
As the Beatrice Shepherd Blane Fellow, Leslie M. Harris is completing “Leaving New Orleans: A Personal Urban History.” She uses memoir and family, urban, and environmental histories to explore the multiple meanings of New Orleans in the nation, from its founding through its uncertain future amid climate change.
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2020 Mar 05
The Khufu Boat
6:00pm
Location: 
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge
In 1954, Egyptian archaeologist Kamal el-Mallakh discovered a 144-foot ship buried next to the Great Pyramid of Giza. The Khufu boat—one of the oldest-known planked vessels from antiquity—was interred in honor of Khufu, the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid. Bob Brier will discuss what is known about the design, propulsion, and function of this 4,600-year- old ship, based on recent tank tests conducted on a model. He will also highlight plans to build a full-scale replica of the vessel and to place it on the Nile.
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2020 Mar 03
International Womxn’s Day Lecture: Dr. Vandana Shiva
6:30pm to 8:00pm
Location: 
Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Dr. Vandana Shiva is trained as a Physicist and did her Ph.D. on the subject “Hidden Variables and Non-locality in Quantum Theory” from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. She later shifted to inter-disciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy, which she carried out at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore. In 1982, she founded an independent institute, the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in Dehra Dun dedicated to high quality and independent research to address the most...
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2020 Mar 02
Lecture: Seed Sovereignty and ‘Our Living Relatives’ in Native American Community Farming and Gardening
12:00pm to 1:30pm
Location: 
Gund Hall, Stubbins Room 112, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Native heirloom seed varieties, many of which have been passed down through generations of Indigenous gardeners or re-acquired from seed banks or ally seed savers, are often discussed by Indigenous farmers as the foundation of the food sovereignty movement, and as helpful tools for education and reclaiming health. This presentation explores how Native American community-based farming and gardening projects are defining heirloom or heritage seeds; why maintaining and growing out these seeds is seen as so important, and how terms like seed sovereignty should be defined and enacted. Many of...
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2020 Feb 27
Saving America’s Cities: The Past, Present, and Future of Urban Revitalization
6:30pm to 8:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, 48 Quincy St., Cambridge
Can past efforts to revitalize America’s cities inform contemporary strategies to address the problems of economic inequality, unaffordable housing, segregated neighborhoods, and deteriorating infrastructure?
That question, in part, informs Saving America’s Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age, a new book by Lizabeth Cohen, Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies at Harvard University and former Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Cohen will discuss this history and will be joined in...
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2020 Feb 27
The Ancient Maya Response to Climate Change: A Cautionary Tale
6:00pm
Location: 
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge
Ancient Maya civilization suffered a major demise between the tenth and eleventh centuries. The causes continue to be investigated and debated. Paleoenvironmental research over the past twenty years has revealed that the demise coincided with a prolonged, intensive drought that extended across the region, providing compelling evidence that climate change played a key role in the collapse of the Maya. Billie Turner will examine this evidence and the complex social and environmental conditions that affected Maya societies.
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2020 Feb 27
The New Geopolitical Order
4:15pm
Location: 
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden St., Cambridge
The new geopolitical environment taking shape in many parts of the world tends toward increasing authoritarianism and nationalistic competition. In this lecture, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, an international human rights advocate and the former United Nations high commissioner for human rights, will argue that the world’s people deserve better. Despite the demagoguery and isolationism that some leaders are pursuing, he believes it is possible to pursue thoughtful diplomacy and a system of connectivity, coalitions, and partnerships to reform institutions and change polices.
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2020 Feb 26
Conducting Oneself: Choreographing Bodies and Identities On and Off the Podium
4:00pm
Location: 
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden St., Cambridge
At Radcliffe, Daniel M. Callahan is beginning his second book, “Conducting Oneself,” which examines how the bodies, identities, and repertoire of orchestra conductors produce, legitimate, and limit their movements on the podium and off, from conservatories to coveted positions. Drawing on movement analysis, oral history, and affect theory, the project explores how conductors visibly embody their empathy with scores while simultaneously projecting expertise and power.
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2020 Feb 25
Lecture: Plants in the Design Imagination
6:30pm to 8:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Please join the Harvard Graduate School of Design for the Sylvester Baxter Lecture featuring a discussion by landscape architects Ron Henderson, Julian Raxworthy, and Douglas Reed, and moderated by Danielle Choi.
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2020 Feb 20
History Reconsidered: Poetry Reading and Discussion
4:15pm
Location: 
Knafel Center, 10 Garden St., Cambridge
Join the Radcliffe Institute for a poetry reading and discussion with Clint Smith.
Clint Smith is a doctoral candidate at Harvard University and an Emerson Fellow at New America. He has received fellowships from the Art For Justice Fund, Cave Canem, and the National Science Foundation, while his writing has been published in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. His first full-length collection of poetry, Counting Descent, was published in 2016. It won the 2017...
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2020 Feb 13
Opening Lecture: Painting Edo
6:00pm to 7:15pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge
As part of the Harvard Art Museums' opening celebration for Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection, SOAS University of London art history professor Timon Screech will present "Into the Kaleidoscope: Painting in Edo Japan."

Tickets are required for the lecture and may be acquired in person, by phone, or online for a small fee through the Harvard Box Office. Limit of two tickets per person.
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2020 Feb 13
Ancient Egyptian Culture and Its Continuity in Modern Egypt
6:00pm
Location: 
Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Egypt’s recorded history spans six thousand years and is therefore one of the longest and best known in the world. Today, Egyptians practice several religious, artistic, and social traditions that can be traced to ancient Egypt, demonstrating the power and longevity of cultural memory. Drawing on research in archaeology, Egyptian art, writing, and culture, Fayza Haikal will examine Egyptian society’s cultural expressions from antiquity to the present, focusing on language, spirituality, superstitions, funerary traditions, and folklore.
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2020 Feb 13
Opening Celebration: Painting Edo
5:00pm to 9:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge
Join the Harvard Art Museums to celebrate the opening of Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection, on view from February 14–July 26, 2020.
Be among the first to see over 120 works included in the Harvard Art Museums' latest show, which celebrates the rich visual culture of Japan's early modern era. The galleries are open late, and admission is free for...
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