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    2021 May 04

    Art Talk Live: Reframing Japonisme

    12:30pm to 1:00pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums—Online

    The fable of the 19th-century European “discovery” of Japanese prints and their catalytic effect on Impressionist painting is by now comfortably worn, threadbare even. But what were painters in Europe actually encountering? 

    In this talk, curator Rachel Saunders will take a close look at a major new acquisition that shines a distinctly different light on European interest in “Japanese art,” and the ways in which this new category was constructed in Japan itself. 

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    2021 May 01

    Creature Feature: What Does the Fox Say?

    10:00am to 10:30am

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums—Online

    Join exhibition production specialist Steve Deane to discover an amazingly intricate silver cup in the shape of a fox head. We will explore how the cup was made, how its use was tied to hunting, and how our exhibition team made the cup “float” for display in an exhibition.

    We’ll also look at a series of prints of Reynard the Fox and a small fox sculpture from the fifth century. Families will learn how to make their own sculpture from Play-Doh!

    ...

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    2021 Apr 29

    This Space Holds a Story

    6:00pm to 7:00pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Ed Portal—Online

    *For high school students living or attending school in Allston, Brighton, or Cambridge!*

    Do you daydream about places you've loved or imagined? Are you curious about how writers turn ideas into stories? Join author Abdul-Razak Zachariah for a glimpse into the children’s book writing process. Write your own story idea for a new generation of readers based on your life and experiences. Abdul will read from his children’s book "...

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    2021 Apr 29

    Performance and Ritual in Ancient Egyptian Funerary Practice

    6:00pm to 7:00pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East—Online

    One of the best documented Egyptian rituals—occurring in both cultic and funerary contexts—is known as the Opening of the Mouth ritual. Performing this ritual was believed to animate statues and temples, while also restoring the senses of the deceased, thus ensuring that they could eat, drink, and breathe in the afterlife. Textual and iconographic references to the ritual are found in different time periods, from the Old Kingdom through the Roman Period.

    In this lecture, Mariam Ayad uses the Opening of the Mouth ritual as a case study to illustrate the power of imagery and the...

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    2021 Apr 29

    Virtual Exhibition: A Walk in the Arboretum: Digital Photocollages by Amy Ragus

    Thu Apr 29 (All day) to Sun Jul 18 (All day)

    Location: 

    Arnold Arboretum—Online

    Photographer Amy Ragus specializes in multiple frame images of New England landscapes—digital photocollages. Before and during the pandemic, Ragus spent time in the Arboretum, particularly interested in its role as a public space, its open access to everyone. Her work captures the discoveries she found just off a road or path, as well as the people who share this space and enjoy nature throughout the seasons. Explore her sensitive, creative depictions of walks in the Arboretum in this virtual exhibition.

    ...

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    2021 Apr 28

    Stories from the End of the World

    7:00pm to 8:00pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums—Online

    The Harvard Art Museums collections have played an important role in the popular undergraduate course Stories from the End of the World, taught by Harvard Divinity School professor Giovanni Bazzana. This fascinating course, which is part of the Harvard College Program in General Education, explores why humans have always imagined the end of their worlds. In this conversation, Professor Bazzana and Jen Thum of the Harvard Art Museums will discuss their recent online collaboration for the course and what students learned about artists’ apocalyptic inspirations over time.

    ...

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    2021 Apr 28

    Prosociality in Hybrid Societies of Humans, Agents, and Robots

    12:00pm

    Location: 

    Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard—Online

    Ana Paiva is a computer science professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, and is investigating the design of intelligent interactive systems by creating “social agents'' that can interact with humans in a natural manner. Over the years, she has developed this field by engineering social agents that exhibit specific capabilities, including emotions, personality, culture, nonverbal behavior, empathy, and collaboration, among others.

    Join Paiva to learn about her current investigation into the conditions and mechanisms that drive societies of agents and...

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    2021 Apr 23

    The Work of Objects: Interpretation within and beyond Museum Walls—Art Museums and the Legacies of the Dutch Slave Trade: Curating Histories, Envisioning Futures (Part 4)

    1:00pm to 2:30pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums—Online

    This session includes brief talks, followed by a roundtable discussion, by academics and museum professionals who focus on Dutch and American art and history. Speakers will discuss specific objects—ranging from the 17th to the 21st century—that have posed interpretive and museological challenges. They will also present new possibilities for considering the relationship between slavery’s past and present-day racial injustice.

    This is the fourth and final session of Art Museums and the Legacies of the Dutch Slave Trade: Curating Histories, Envisioning Futures, presented...

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    2021 Apr 23

    History, Memory, and Legacy: Jamaica Kincaid, Rosana Paulino, and Cheryl Finley in Conversation—Art Museums and the Legacies of the Dutch Slave Trade: Curating Histories, Envisioning Futures (Part 3)

    11:00am to 12:00pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums—Online

    Renowned writer Jamaica Kincaid and groundbreaking visual artist Rosana Paulino will discuss their explorations of the legacies of slavery in their work. They will be joined in conversation by eminent art historian Cheryl Finley.

    This is the third session of Art Museums and the Legacies of the Dutch Slave Trade: Curating Histories, Envisioning Futures, presented by the Center for Netherlandish Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Harvard Art Museums, and...

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    2021 Apr 21

    The Dawn of Olmec Civilization

    6:00pm to 7:00pm

    Location: 

    Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology—Online

    The hearth of Olmec civilization is located in the tropical lowlands of Mexico’s southern Gulf Coast region, in the majestic archaeological site of San Lorenzo. The inhabitants of this first Olmec capital developed a distinctive geo-political territory and managed complex trade systems. The Olmec also created spectacular earthen architecture and magnificent stone sculpture—including the famous Colossal Heads—that reflect their stratified social organization and centralized political system backed by religion and directed by hereditary rulers.

    Building on the pioneering work of...

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    2021 Apr 20

    Cecilia Puga

    7:30pm to 9:00pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design—Online

    Cecilia Puga is the Director and founding partner of CECILIA PUGA – PAULA VELASCO ARQUITECTURA. Since 1995 she has developed her professional practice independently in Santiago, where she has carried out design projects at different scales and programs, from single-family homes (most notably the House in Bahia Azul), to collective housing, educational and industrial equipment, and urban design such as the renovation of public spaces in Cerro Toro. She has developed her academic activity at Universidad Católica de Santiago, at ETH Zurich’s School of Architecture, Austin’s University of...

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    2021 Apr 20

    Racial Inequity and Housing Instability in Boston: Past, Present, and Future

    4:00pm

    Location: 

    Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard—Online

    Millions of Americans have long struggled to pay for housing, with communities of color additionally burdened by housing discrimination and historical race-based policies, such as legalized segregation, redlining, and mortgage discrimination. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent economic crisis, the federal government instituted a moratorium on evictions that is currently set to expire on March 31, 2021. Despite this, the continuing public health emergency has exacerbated the national housing affordability crisis for people of color, who are more likely to have lost...

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    2021 Apr 20

    Art Talk Live: Up Close and Personal—Looking at Ancient Textiles

    12:30pm to 1:00pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums—Online

    Egyptian makers were skilled at using only a few materials to create a rich variety of textiles, but we rarely have detailed information about the people who made them or their artistic processes.

    Join conservation fellow Julie Wertz to explore what close looking, microscopy, and micro-analytical techniques can teach us about the materials and methods these unknown makers used to create beautiful and functional art objects.

    ...

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    2021 Apr 20

    Virtual Exhibit: Women of the Museum, 1860–1920: Behind-the-Scenes at the Museum of Comparative Zoology

    Tue Apr 20 (All day) to Fri Dec 31 (All day)

    Location: 

    Harvard Museums of Science & Culture—Online

    For the first time in the museum’s history, women who labored in the collections, offices, and labs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology in the late 19th century are being revealed in a unique online exhibit from the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture. The exhibit is curated by Reed Gochberg, Assistant Director of Studies and a Lecturer on History and Literature at Harvard University.

    Women like Elizabeth Hodges Clark, Elizabeth Bangs Bryant, and Elvira Wood persevered diligently behind-the-scenes, gaining unparalleled expertise in what were previously thought to be men’...

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    2021 Apr 17

    Haiku and You: Writing Workshop

    11:00am to 12:00pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums—Online

    Offered as part of Haiku and You: Painting Edo and the Arnold Arboretum, this participatory virtual poetry workshop, led by Sheryl White of the Arnold Arboretum, will allow you to collaborate with other writers to consider and compose contemporary haiku, inspired by works in the Harvard Art Museums exhibition Painting Edo and the living landscapes of the Arnold Arboretum.

    ...

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    2021 Apr 17

    Virtual Student Guide Tour: Climate Change, with Sophia Mautz

    11:00am to 11:30am

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums—Online

    Sophia Mautz ’21 illuminates our unfolding climate crisis in her tour focused on three works of art: a 14th-century handscroll painting from Japan, Earthquake from the Legendary History of the Jin’o-ji; a photograph from 1978 by American artist Ana Mendieta, Untitled [filueta grass mound burnt with a cast iron hand, Iowa]; and ...

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    2021 Apr 16

    Harvard Dance Center Spring '21 Artist Talk

    4:00pm to 5:00pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Dance Center—Online

    In conversation with: Harvard Dance Center returning visiting artists Peter Chu, Chanel DaSilva, and Shamel Pitts.

    Choreographers and dancers are problem-solvers. They move through crises rather than around them. Join us this spring for community gatherings with Harvard Dance Center’s exceptional teaching artists in a series of artist-led dialogues that explore how artistry, identity, and advocacy take shape in turbulent times.

    ...

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    2021 Apr 16

    Resetting the Table: A Virtual Talk and Tour with the Curators

    2:00pm to 3:00pm

    Location: 

    Food Literacy Project—Online

    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...

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