Immerse yourself in the deep beauty of trees in this story and music journey through the Arboretum. Led by Oracle award-winning storyteller Diane Edgecomb and Celtic harper Margot Chamberlain, this unfolding performance of ancient tales and songs from cultures around the world takes place in a variety of groves—birch, cherry, and evergreen—at some of the Arboretum’s loveliest spots.
This event is free, but registration is required and limited. Not designed for children under 12, and dogs are not allowed. COVID guidelines will be followed.
In her tour, Maeve Miller ’22 will explore how performance and entertainment figure into three works of art. She will examine the woodcutMagician (1956), which Erich Heckel made in Germany more than 40 years after the heyday of his involvement with the Expressionist art movement; the painting Ventriloquist(1952), which Jacob Lawrence made in Harlem, New York, as part of his Performance Series; and a woodblock print...
Join us for a virtual tour of the famous Glass Flowers! This docent-led tour will delve into the history, artistry, and significance of the collection and give participants the opportunity to explore the gallery online. These interactive tours are approximately one hour long, and offer time for questions and discussion with your tour guide.
Student Guide Cecilia Zhou’s art-inspired makeup tutorials have appeared on the social media channels of the Harvard Art Museums and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In this tour, she will spend time with three paintings that inspired her: the 20th-century Head of a Woman by Russian Expressionist Alexei von Jawlensky, the 3rd-century Egyptian ...
Join us for a virtual tour of the famous Glass Flowers! This docent-led tour will delve into the history, artistry, and significance of the collection and give participants the opportunity to explore the gallery online. These interactive tours are approximately one-hour in length, and offer time for Q&A with your tour guide.
The "Resetting the Table: Food and Our Changing Tastes" exhibition at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology explores food choices and eating habits in the United States, including the sometimes hidden but always important ways in which our tables are shaped by cultural, historical, political, and technological influences.
Join us on this special virtual talk and tour at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology with Joyce Chapli, guest curator and Harvard University James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History; Janis Sacco, Director...
Join us for a virtual tour of the famous Glass Flowers! This docent-led tour will delve into the history, artistry, and significance of the collection and give participants the opportunity to explore the gallery online. These interactive tours are approximately one hour long, and offer time for questions and discussion with your tour guide.
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.
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.
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, ...