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.
Cochineal (Dactylopius coccus) is a small insect that produces a brilliant red pigment. Found in textiles, paintings, cosmetics, and many other objects that span the globe, cochineal is an integral part of world history. Cochineal pigment was used by Mesoamerican peoples long before the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century. After being introduced to Europe, it quickly became a precious commodity and control over its global trade was a source of conflict and competition for over three centuries. In this lecture, Gabriela Soto Laveaga will trace the fascinating history of cochineal...
Mélanie Lamotte is an assistant professor of French at Tulane University. After completing her first book, under contract with Harvard University Press, she is undertaking a research project that examines the material life of the enslaved across the early modern French empire, thereby reconstructing the cultural, social, economic, and political experiences of slave communities. Join her to learn more about her work.
Yasuo Kuniyoshi once proclaimed that “an artist’s drawings are his first words.” Having emigrated from Japan to the United States at the age of 16, Kuniyoshi relied upon drawing as his most expressive medium. Through drawing, he translated the anxiety, disillusionment, and alienation faced by Japanese émigrés in the aftermath of World War II into a uniquely personal and dynamic American modernist style.
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.
Lysley Tenorio, an English professor at St. Mary’s College of California, is the author of the novel “The Son of Good Fortune” (Ecco, 2021) and the story collection “Monstress” (Ecco, 2012). In this lecture, he will discuss the research and writing process of his next novel.
Drawing from experience accumulated over 40 years of academic and professional trajectory on the question of landscape, as a university professor, director of the Landscape Observatory of Catalonia and ‘militant’ for landscape, Joan Nogué will reflect on the theory and practice of landscape today and into the future.
Professor Nogué defends an integral conception of landscape that considers both the tangible and intangible elements. Such conception highlights the geohistorical singularity of landscape –every landscape belongs to a specific space and time– while acknowledging...
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.
Manifest: Thirteen Colonies is a photographic project and journey through the repositories of African American material culture found in libraries, museums, and archives of the original thirteen English colonies. Conceived by photographer Wendel White, this project is a personal, selective reliquary of the remarkable evidence of Black agency and racial oppression stored in public and private collections.
In this program, White will discuss his approach to finding, selecting, and photographing artifacts—from rare singular objects, to more quotidian materials—and highlight their...
Human evolutionary scholars have long assumed that the earliest stone tools were made by members of the genus Homo, approximately 2.4–2.3 million years ago, and that this technological development was directly linked to climate change and the spread of savannah grasslands. In the last decade, fieldwork in West Turkana, Kenya, has revealed evidence of much earlier technological behavior.
Sonia Harmand will discuss the discovery of stone tools in a 3.3-million-year-old archaeological site in Kenya known as Lomekwi 3. She will show how this discovery is reshaping our...
TERREMOTO is presently navigating a transitional period within its practice towards making omni-positive gardens and landscapes that are fair, just and generous in their relationships to labor, materials and ecology. We believe that we are at a cultural, environmental + civilizational fork in the road, and through deep internal self-interrogation of landscape history and practice (including our own), we are creating a constantly evolving set of metrics that will allow us (and you!) to create gardens that can lock horns with the BIGNESS of this moment. What a time to be alive! And what a...
Join Egyptologist Jen Thum for an engaging look at the results of new research on the tomb relief of Ptahshepses Impy, an Egyptian official. Thum will explore the implications of this research, including possible changes to the display of the relief to indicate missing portions.
Sotomayor's celebrated debut feature follows a young family on a road trip, of which the final destination remains ambiguous. Told largely from the point of view of ten-year-old Lucia as she observes the world unfolding before her and intuits her parents’ fraying relationship, Thursday Till Sunday avoids over-narrativization by focusing upon those in-between spaces and non-events noticed by the young girl.
Cost: $10 for general public; $8 for non-Harvard students & seniors; free for Harvard ID holders
Evolving from his large-format photographs—the same medium of Walker Evans and William Christenberry who also famously focused their lenses on rural Hale County, Alabama—Ross walks a multi-dimensional path both alongside and away from these artistic predecessors. As suns set and moons rise and eclipse, Ross’ camera moves fluidly in and out of invisibility and interaction, capturing moments miniscule and monumental, quotidian and otherworldly, with the same curious, clear eye.
One of ancient Egypt's high points of cultural, intellectual, and social life was the period referred to as the Middle Kingdom (2030–1650 BCE). The ancient city of Thebes (modern Luxor) was the Egyptian capital during the early stage of this period and the site of multiple funerary temples and tombs. In this lecture, Egyptologist Antonio Morales will discuss an international and multidisciplinary project that is conducting archaeological, historical, and cultural research, as well as conservation work, in Deir el-Bahari and Asasif—two funerary areas at Thebes—to better understand the...
Creating a strong sense of place is critical to cultural identity in Native American communities. New tribal building and planning projects provide significant opportunities for tribal communities to reinforce cultural revival efforts while advancing economic, educational, and healthcare initiatives. This session will encourage an open and interactive discussion of the central issues in tribal design and efforts to lead a fundamental shift toward culturally appropriate design solutions and self-determination. Plus, this session will highlight diverse Native American projects that have...
Elizabeth A. Baker is a new renaissance artist who chiefly explores how sonic and spatial worlds can be manipulated to personify a variety of philosophies and principles, both tangible and intangible. In this lecture, she will discuss her new creation: Field Studies, which dismantles a human-centered narrative to foster dialogue and act as revolutionary resistance against systemic inequity.
French architect Anne Lacaton will deliver the inaugural Jaqueline Tyrwhitt Urban Design Lecture. Lacaton and partner Jean-Philippe Vassal received the 2021 Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honor.
Anne Lacaton (1955, Saint-Pardoux, France) and Jean-Philippe Vassal met in the late 1970s during their formal architecture training at École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et de Paysage de Bordeaux. They established Lacaton & Vassal in Paris (1987), and have since demonstrated boldness...
Michael W. Twitty—food writer, independent scholar, culinary historian, and historical interpreter—is the author of the Afroculinaria blog and The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South. He will discuss his insights about the role of enslaved people in shaping American foodways, as well as the critical importance of including stories of the enslaved prominently in public history and historical interpretation.
Erica Chenoweth is a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute and the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School. In this lecture, Chenoweth will present their ongoing research for their next book, written with Zoe Marks. Titled, “Rebel XX: Women on the Frontlines of Revolution,” the book is about the impact of women’s participation on revolutionary outcomes.