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...
Hunnewell Building, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston
Join the Arnold Arboretum for an opening reception for their newest exhibition, The Path Taken: Photography by Lawrence Mullings.
On any given day, Lawrence Mullings can be found exploring the paths and hidden corners of the Arboretum. While walking in the landscape to regain his health, his joy in photography was rekindled. He saw how the Arboretum was many different things to him, and to the many different people who come here from around the neighborhood and around the world. To Mullings, the Arboretum is its trees, as well as the myriad ways visitors enjoy them...
Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, 11 Divinity Ave., Cambridge
Resetting the Table: Food and Our Changing Tastes 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.
One dinner served in 1910 will form the centerpiece—literally—of Resetting the Table. The historical and cultural roots of the foods on the menu, and the privileged context of their presentation, will be explored. Selections from ten University collections will reveal the long history...
Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, 11 Divinity Ave., Cambridge
"Shrink" yourself down to "walk" into an ancient Maya vessel using augmented reality! Maya women were often essential for uniting kingdoms. When a marriage was arranged between Maya royal families, kings would exchange gifts like this ceramic three-legged plate for serving chocolate. Use the museum’s iPad as a "magic window" to discover fine details on one such plate that cannot be seen on the actual artifact. A gallery facilitator will guide you through the experience and will share more about the Maya.
"Travel" in fifteen minutes to an archaeological site in Ashkelon, Israel to explore the first-ever excavation of a Philistine burial ground. For years archaeologists have searched for evidence of these Biblical people. Transport yourself to the center of 360° scenes of an archaeological expedition while your gallery facilitator explains what you are seeing. Borrow a device from the museum or download the virtual reality app on your smart phone and bring it to place in a 3D viewer at the museum for an immersive experience.
Curated by Elisa H. Hamilton for the Crossings Gallery, Breakaway features the work of four artists who push beyond the confines of a gallery wall. Experimenting with shape, line, texture and color, each artist blurs the boundaries that inform our perception. Pieces by Adria Arch, Destiny Palmer, Rebecca Rose Greene, and Vanessa Irzyk invite the viewer to experience that compelling moment when the two-dimensional breaks away from the wall to become something new.
Ceramics Program, Office for the Arts at Harvard, 224 Western Ave., Allston
Join us for a lecture with Natalia Arbelaez, 2018-19 Artist In Residence at the Ceramics Program, Office for the Arts at Harvard as she discusses the work developed during her residency over the past year. Immediately following the lecture, join us in Gallery 224 from 5:00pm–7:00pm for the opening reception of Passages of Absence, Arbelaez's solo exhibition.
Concert for One will pair individual listeners with solo musicians for 60 seconds of focused live performance and concentrated listening, fostering intimate connections between performers and audience members. Performances will take place inside a temporary art installation on the Science Center Plaza featuring an interactive lobby and performance space that will have just enough room for two chairs, two people and an instrument.
Concert for One is free and open to the public, no reservations or tickets required.The performer’s name, instrument, and what...
The Special Exhibitions Gallery, Science Center 251, 1 Oxford St., Cambridge
This exhibit features images and objects drawn from a variety of disciplines and time periods that show the importance of visual experiences in science. Images have played many roles in scientific research. Images can record fleeting observations, whether a painting of an animal glimpsed in the field or an interaction between sub-atomic particles that lasts a millisecond. They can also make unseen things visible.
Physical models can make abstract mathematical concepts into something that researchers can touch; properly arranged, sand, metal plates, and a violin bow can make...
Ceramics Program, Office for the Arts at Harvard, 224 Western Ave., Allston
Join Ceramics Program, Office for the Arts at Harvard for a lecture with Colby Charpentier, 2018–19 Artist In Residence, as he discusses the work he developed during his residency. Charpentier has created work that explores the question “What if we took clay out of the vessel and glaze was all that remained? And what does it mean to replicate a 3-D printing process by hand? The result is ceramic: glass, devitrified.”
Immediately following the lecture will be the opening reception of Devitrified, Charpentier's solo exhibition.
Harvard Art Museums, Special Exhibitions Gallery, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge
What does it mean to be displaced from culture and home? What are the historical contexts for understanding our contemporary moment? How does an artist’s work and process embody and engage the narratives of displacement and belonging?
Crossing Lines, Constructing Home investigates two parallel ideas: national, political, and cultural conceptions of boundaries and borders; and the evolving hybrid spaces, identities, languages, and beliefs created by the movement of peoples.
Harvard Art Museums, University Research Gallery, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge
In this new exhibit, discover how celebrated American artist Winslow Homer’s work for the illustrated periodical Harper’s Weekly helped shape his later career as a painter and watercolorist.
During the Civil War (1861–1865), American artist Winslow Homer (1836–1910) served as a correspondent for Harper’s. His sketches of soldiers, both in battle on the front lines and in quieter moments back at camp, were reproduced to accompany the journal’s accounts of the conflict. Homer worked for Harper’s just as new technologies were making it possible to rapidly...
Harvard Art Museums, University Teaching Gallery, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge
Christianity has important early roots in the Nile Valley and Ethiopia. Related arts often embody core local African values—an aesthetics that privileges moral value and simplicity over opulence, wealth, or power. This is an art of the people: limestone not marble, wool and linen rather than silk, bone instead of ivory, terracotta, wood, and copper in place of gold.
Harvard Art Museums, University Teaching Gallery, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge
Critical Printing is an experimental course offered by Harvard’s Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies that integrates studio and seminar instruction, allowing students to explore print as artists and scholars simultaneously. In this installation, as in the course, prints are organized not by medium or chronology, but by fundamental modes of critical thinking that emerge from the printmaking process. In the gallery, works are grouped around the following themes: reversal; pressure; color separation; depth; and replicability.
Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford St., Cambridge
Fruits in Decay is a new special exhibit in the Glass Flowers gallery that explores blight, rot, and other diseases on summer fruits. It features exquisitely detailed glass botanical models of strawberries, peaches, apricots, plums, and pears made by famed glass artist Rudolf Blaschka. On display for the first time in nearly two decades, these models capture—with astonishing realism—the intricacies and strange beauty of fruits in various stages of decay.
Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, 11 Divinity Ave., Cambridge
Nearly as universal as war itself has been the inclination to decorate the weapons of war. People through time and in nearly all cultures - rich and poor, leaders and followers, foragers in the most forbidding climates on the planet, and kings of the world’s great civilizations - have painstakingly embellished their weapons. We may marvel at their splendor in startling contrast to their deadly purpose, and we may wonder why we have always felt so compelled to transform implements of war into objects of surprising beauty.
Sneha Shrestha (aka Imagine), Ed.M.’17 brings her large scale mural indoors to Gutman Library by reducing the size of her work while still sharing a big mindful message. She invites viewers to slow down and meditate over the multiple layers in this painting and wishes to share with and inspire the community to keep their sense of wonder and be open to surprises that we encounter in our lives and our careers.
Sneha Shrestha (aka Imagine), Ed.M.’17 brings her large-scale mural indoors to Gutman Library by reducing the size of her work while still sharing a big mindful message. She invites viewers to slow down and meditate over the multiple layers in this painting and wishes to inspire the community to keep their sense of wonder and be open to surprises that we encounter in our lives and our careers.
Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford St., Cambridge
On July 20, 2019, the Harvard Museum of Natural History marked the fiftieth anniversary of the first manned mission to the Moon with the unveiling of Cosmic Origins. Visitors to this new mini-exhibit—located within the Earth & Planetary Sciences exhibition—will investigate the origins of and processes shaping planetary bodies and stars using touchable specimens, colorful visuals, and interactive media.
Through November 27, 2019, the exhibit will also feature an original lunar specimen on loan from NASA, collected during the Apollo 12 mission. Don’t miss the...
Houghton Library, Edison and Newman Room, Harvard Yard, Cambridge
Join curator John Overholt for a guided tour of the exhibition to learn about the ways early modern science inspired and made possible the historic Apollo 11 moon landing.