Events

    The State of Housing Design 2023

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium (48 Quincy St., Cambridge)

    What is the state of housing design in the US? In particular, how are architects of new single- and multi-family housing responding to issues such as the warming climate, the affordability crisis, increasing regulations and construction costs, and the demand for new unit types that better reflect today's demographic realities?

    These questions will be the focus of a half-day event marking the release of The State of Housing Design 2023, a new book that examines themes in housing design, explored through over 100 recent buildings in the US. The event will feature panels...

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    Fall 2023 Architecture Tours of the Carpenter Center

    Location: 

    Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge

    Join the fall 2023 Public Building & Architecture Tours of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, housed within Le Corbusier’s only building in North America, led by architecture students. Walk through and learn more about the layered history of the building, its brutalist and modernist structural features, and the educational and cultural legacy of the Carpenter Center at Harvard University.

    Addtional tour date: December 9

    ...

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    Our Artificial Nature: Perspectives on Design for an Era of Environmental Change

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium (48 Quincy St., Cambridge)

    On the occasion of the opening of the exhibition Our Artificial Nature, featuring Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities core and affiliated research faculty, the GSD hosts a candid dialogue on the trajectory of design research and practice in response to environmental change.

    Carson Chan, curator of the concurrent MoMA exhibition Emerging Ecologies: Architecture and the Rise of Environmentalism, will engage GSD faculty in a conversation about past design speculations, current research, and practice futures.

    The conversation will address the cultural...

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    Pop-Up Renaissance Concert

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    The Harvard Viol Consort, a group of students from Harvard’s hands-on history course Performance and Culture: Renaissance Music (Music 181R), will put on a pop-up concert in the Calderwood Courtyard. The course is taught by Professor Kate van Orden and assisted by Laura Jeppesen.

    The performers will play compositions for viol by William Byrd, John Dowland, Diego Ortiz, Leonora Duarte, and other Renaissance composers.

    ...

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    Gallery Talk—Objects of Addiction: Opium, Empire, and the Chinese Art Trade

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    Join curator Sarah Laursen for a closer look at artworks in the exhibition Objects of Addiction: Opium, Empire, and the Chinese Art Trade (September 15, 2023–January 14, 2024). The exhibition explores the entwined histories of the opium trade and the Chinese art market between the late 18th and early 20th centuries. Laursen will share how these two commodities—acquired through both legal and illicit means—have had a lasting impact on the global economy, public health, immigration law, education, and the arts.

    ...

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    VOCARIUM READING SERIES: Forrest Gander & Jorie Graham

    Location: 

    Houghton Library, Harvard Yard, Cambridge

    The Woodberry Poetry Room welcomes you to its grand finale event of the season: a reading by Pulitzer Prize-winning poets Forrest Gander (author of Knot, Copper Canyon, 2022) and Jorie Graham (author of To 2040, Copper Canyon, 2023). Introductory remarks will be delivered by poet and critic Stephanie Burt.

    An informal reception and book-signing (provided by Grolier Poetry Book Shop) will follow the event.

    ...

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    Caring for Navajo Culture: In Museums and Beyond

    Location: 

    Online or at Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge and Peabody Museum, 11 Divinity Ave., Cambridge

    Join Stephanie Mach (Diné), Peabody Museum Curator of North American Collections and Diné (Navajo) guests for a panel conversation about the ways they each care for Navajo cultural heritage within their various areas of work and interest.

    Following the panel conversation, attendees are encouraged to visit the Hall of the North American Indian at the Peabody Museum where Harvard students will be available to share information about key cultural items on display.

    ...

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    Gallery Talk: A Tale of Two Vessels

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    Join curatorial assistant Casey Monahan to explore how two 19th-century ceramic vessels tell different stories of the United States. One vessel is made by enslaved potter David Drake and shows us both the artist’s agency and the lack of it. The other vessel is a presentation vase created for the U.S. centennial; it includes narrative imagery intended to evoke a shared American identity after the Civil War.

    ...

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    Aga Khan Program Lecture: Catherine Mosbach, "Design is a Language: Being Receptive, Being in Motion"

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium (48 Quincy St., Cambridge)

    Drawing works both ways. Behind the outline, there is a goal to be reached: to give visibility to the masses in the process of being produced. It is only a revelation of possibilities. It is clearly the outline that produces the narrative. The masses evolve at their own pace, whether micro or macro. The outlines are a matter of a 'self,' of a 'singular' that exposes itself to the 'multiple;' for the time being, we don’t know about tomorrow.

    What would be our sensitive imprint if we gave up on interpretation, in other words, on the subtle interplay between the eye,...

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    Kim and Judy Davis Dean’s Lecture in the Social Sciences: Conversation with Ruth J. Simmons

    Location: 

    Online or at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Knafel Center, 10 Garden St., Cambridge

    Join a discussion for Ruth J. Simmons' (former president of Prairie View A&M University) new book, Up Home: One Girl’s Journey (Random House, 2023), as well as her personal journey, her pioneering work researching and sharing publicly universities' historical ties to slavery, and her perspectives on the future of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and higher education in light of recent Supreme Court rulings.

    ...

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    Film Screening: Wild Life

    Location: 

    Harvard Divinity School, James Room (Swartz Hall), 45 Francis Ave., Cambridge

    Join us for a public screening of Oscar-winning filmmakers Chai Vasarhely and Jimmy Chin's extraordinary film Wild Life—a story of love, wildness, and restoration in Patagonia, Chile. The film follows conservationist Kris Tompkins on an epic decades-spanning love story as wild as the landscapes she dedicated her life to protecting.

    A discussion on the film will follow the screening. Special guests include Kris Tompkins and Chai Valarhelyi in conversation with guest curator Geralyn Dreyfous and HDS writer-in-residence Terry Tempest Williams.

    ...

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    Hip-Hop Experience Workshop: The Art of 16 Bars

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    To celebrate National Hip-Hop History Month in November and the 50th anniversary of this world-changing cultural and artistic movement, we are offering the Hip-Hop Experience Workshop, facilitated by artist and singer Jazzmyn RED.

    This session will highlight elements of hip-hop and take a closer look at the art of being an MC. Jazzmyn will discuss MC writing techniques, instrumental visualization, and how to find your flow. Participants will write their own 16 bars (16 counts of 4) to perform for the group.

    ...

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    Teen Saturdays at the Museum! / ¡Sábados de Jóvenes en el Museo!

    Location: 

    Harvard Museum of Natural History (26 Oxford Street) and Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology (11 Divinity Avenue)

    Teen Saturdays is designed for Latino high school students. Workshops delve into four fascinating traditional celebrations from Central America. Participants will embark on a journey to discover diverse festivals that shape societies in El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. During each workshop, teenagers will visit exhibits, use art and language to create original works, and challenge their sense of what a tradition can be through discussion. We will learn about the historical and social contexts behind these festivities, their cultural symbolism, and the values they embody...

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    Pier Vittorio Aureli, "The Longhouse"

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium (48 Quincy St., Cambridge)

    The lecture presents Dogma's research of the longhouse, the linear, long, and narrow habitation typology that existed and still exists in many parts of the world, including South-East Asia, Europe, and North America. While there are numerous scholarly investigations of specific cases of longhouses, a comparative study of this ubiquitous type of habitation is missing. This lacuna is both surprising and understandable. It is surprising because the longhouse is among the most ubiquitous forms of pre-modern dwellings. Alternatively, it is comprehensible because the longhouse represents a...

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    Curator-Led Exhibition Tour: At the Limits of the Book

    Location: 

    Houghton Library, Harvard Yard, Cambridge

    Join exhibition curator and Houghton librarian Molly Schwartzburg for a special guided tour of At the Limits of the Book: Bindings from the Houghton Library Collections. This 45-minute tour will include discussion of the themes of the exhibition, highlights from the materials on display, and ample time for participant questions.

    Learn more and RSVP.

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    __positions

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall Loeb Library Lobby, 48 Quincy St., Cambridge

    "__positions" is a series of conversations convened by the Department of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design aimed at revealing the positions taken by players on the field of contemporary architecture. The series unfolds the complexity of relations and metaphors to make them explicit, inviting faculty and guests to voice where they stand.

    November __positions event speakers: Germane Barnes,...

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    Midday Organ Recital: Scott Hyslop

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, Adolphus Busch Hall, 29 Kirkland St., Cambridge

    Scott Hyslop, director of parish music at St. Lorenz Lutheran Church in Frankenmuth, Michigan, will perform. Recitals are performed on Harvard’s famous 1958 D. A. Flentrop organ.

    Audience members are invited to lunch quietly while listening.

    Learn more.

    What’s Inside a Generative Artificial-Intelligence Model? And Why Should We Care?

    Location: 

    Harvard Radcliffe Institute—Online

    A presentation from 2023–2024 Sally Starling Seaver Professor Fernanda Viégas

    During her fellowship, Viégas is excited to explore new modes of human/AI interaction that draw from her roots in data visualization and human-computer interaction. She is interested in the possibility of leveraging advances in AI interpretability (usually aimed at experts) to help drive improvements in lay user agency and control of AI systems. She looks forward to working with colleagues from various departments at Harvard to uncover creative and useful ways of empowering a wide range of...

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