Join us for an evening of art, fun, food, and more!
This evening marks the launch of Harvard Art Museums at Night, which will take place the last Thursday of every month, from 5 to 9pm. Each night will feature a new mix of local talent and community partners to make this a festive occasion for all.
Bring your friends to mingle in the Calderwood Courtyard, chat over a snack or drink at Jenny’s Cafe, browse the shop, and of course, wander the galleries to take in our world-class collections of art.
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.
Ladee Hubbard is a writer whose most recent novel is “The Rib King” (Amistad, 2021). In this lecture, she will discuss her current project, a novel that examines the implications of the ways in which Black people in the United States have historically been represented as an internal threat to both public health and safety, placing the 1980s War on Drugs in dialogue with the larger history of African Americans being used in drug trials and medical experiments.
Concluding the second annual Mayors Institute on City Design (MICD) Just City Mayoral Fellowship–a collaboration between the MICD and Harvard GSD’s Just City Lab–the Fellows discuss strategies for using planning and design interventions to address racial injustice in each of their cities.
Anneliese Hager (1904–1997) made significant contributions to the medium of camera-less photography and to the wider surrealist movement in Europe. The camera-less photograph, or photogram, is an image made by placing objects directly on (or in close proximity to)...
Stéphanie Bru and Alexandre Theriot founded Bruther in Paris in 2007. They belong to the generation of architects who started their careers at the beginning of the recession, a condition likely to be reflected in the way they define architecture: as a Swiss Army knife, a tool to be used in the most disparate circumstances, an aid that reconciles all fields of knowledge.
Ancient Egypt conjures images of pharaonic temples, tombs, and pyramids, and perhaps, even the familiar illustrations from children’s books and magazines showing kilted workers on the Nile toiling away on their kings’ great monuments. But what is the relationship between these images—along with the deep history they evoke and the processes of discovery that made them visible—and the history of modern Egypt?
In this talk, Wendy Doyon will discuss the relationship between state, archaeology, and labor in Mehmed (or Muhammad) Ali’s Egypt—an autonomous khedival, or viceregal,...
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.
Public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have affected the daily lives of many of us, including children. The next Population Mental Health Forum will focus on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant public health restrictions on children’s mental health. Dr. Karestan Koenen will be joined by Dr. Tamsin Ford from the University of Cambridge who will discuss recent research findings related to children’s mental health during this time. The event will conclude with a Q&A session with attendees.
Cochineal, a tiny insect found on certain species of Oaxacan cacti, was harvested for millennia by Indigenous peoples to dye fabrics a vibrant red color. But following the European invasion of the Americas in the sixteenth century, it became a widely coveted, globally traded commodity that transformed textiles and art, and made Mexico a center for technological innovation. Cochineal: How Mexico Made the World See Red explores how this Indigenous technology changed the world, becoming an international symbol of power, while simultaneously disenfranchising its discoverers.
Inclusions, an art installation created by Kiana Rawji '23, Cecilia Zhou '23, and Luke Reeve MDE '23, affirms that just as Harvard has shaped its students, so too have the students shaped Harvard; the student bricks will serve as records of formative contact between entities, expressions of individual identity, presence, and power in public space. During the month of April 2022, the bricks will be used to create a cohesive installation in Harvard Yard near Thayer Hall.
Join Kiana and Cecilia, with special guest commentator Professor Tracy K. Smith and moderator...
“Today is global” is a rather banal truism, but what really is today’s globalism? In a conversation with contributors from across the globe, Harvard Design Magazine introduces issue #50: Today’s Global, guest-edited by Sarah M. Whiting and Rahul Mehrotra.
Today’s world has entered a phase of critical backlash against globalization, which is for some a critique of...
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.
Trauma-Responsive Schooling outlines a novel approach to transforming American schools through student-centered, trauma-informed practices. The book chronicles the use of an innovative educational model, Trauma-Responsive Equitable Education (TREE), as part of a multiyear research project in two elementary schools in rural Maine. In this model, Lyn Mikel Brown,Ed.D.'89, Catharine Biddle, and Mark Tappan, Ed.D.'87, endorse whole-school change, encouraging educators to upend traditional classroom power dynamics by listening foremost to student voices, validating student...
Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford St., Cambridge
Join us to hunt for mythical creatures across the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture. Can you find a genie, merfolk, or a centaur? What might have inspired a cyclops or a piranha plant? Travel through the galleries of four museums on your quest for these amazing creatures. Test your skills in the galleries of the Harvard Museum of Natural History, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, and the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments.
On April 15, let the adventure begin! Time is limited, so plan...
Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford St., Cambridge
Join us to hunt for mythical creatures across the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture. Can you find a genie, merfolk, or a centaur? What might have inspired a cyclops or a piranha plant? Travel through the galleries of four museums on your quest for these amazing creatures. Test your skills in the galleries of the Harvard Museum of Natural History, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, and the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments.
On April 15, let the adventure begin! Time is limited, so plan...
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.