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    Magic and Demonology in Ancient Egypt

    Location: 

    Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge

    Ancient Egyptian texts and objects associated with funerary rituals often include references to “magic” and “demons.” Rita Lucarelli will look at how these concepts were defined and used in ancient Egypt, with a special focus on the roles that demons played in magical practices and spells. Through an examination of textual and material sources produced from the early Pharaonic to the Greco-Roman periods, she will also address how Egyptian beliefs about demons compare with those of other ancient cultures.

    ...

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    The Amazonian Travels of Richard Evans Schultes

    Location: 

    Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge

    Richard Evans Schultes—ethnobotanist, taxonomist, writer, photographer, and Harvard professor—is regarded as one of the most important plant explorers of the twentieth century. In 1941, Schultes traveled to the Amazon rainforest on a mission to study how Indigenous peoples used plants for medicinal, ritual, and practical purposes. A new interactive online map, produced by the Amazon Conservation Team, traces the landscapes and cultures that Schultes explored in the Colombian Amazon. Plotkin and Hettler will share this map and discuss the relevance of Schultes’ travels and...

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    Daniel Urban Kiley Lecture: Dilip Da Cunha, “The Invention of Rivers”

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA

    Separating land and water is not just an act of division; it is also an act of creation. It creates land and water from ubiquitous wetness, defining them on either side of a line. It is one of the first acts of design, setting out a ground of habitation with a line that has largely been naturalized in features such as the coastline, the riverbank, and the water’s edge. These features are subjected to artistic representations, scientific inquiry, infrastructural engineering, and landscape design with little awareness of the act that brought them...

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    2019 Feb 18

    February Vacation Week Activities

    Repeats every day until Fri Feb 22 2019 . Also includes Sun Feb 24 2019.
    (All day)

    Location: 

    Harvard Semitic Museum, 6 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge

    Free, fun, family activities allow visitors to explore arts from the ancient Near East. Activities change daily: make Egyptian accessories, inscribe clay tablets, or decode hieroglyphics. Drop in for five minutes--or 30--to see what is new every day.

    Activities take place on the first floor of the Harvard Semitic Museum. This HMSC museum explores the rich history of cultures connected by the family of Semitic languages. Exhibitions include a full-scale replica of an ancient Israelite home, life-sized casts of famous Mesopotamian monuments, authentic mummy...

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    Blodgett Quartet in Residence: Parker Quartet

    Location: 

    John Knowles Paine Concert Hall, 3 Oxford Street, Cambridge

    Join the Parker Quartet for performances of Beethoven String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 18, No. 6; Xenakis Tetras for String Quartet; Schubert Quartet No. 13 "Rosamunde," D. 804.

    Free but tickets required, available beginning February 1 at Harvard Box Office. Tickets may be picked up in person or obtained by phone or ...

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    Traces and Tracks: Journeys with the San

    Location: 

    Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge

    For nearly three decades, Paul Weinberg has travelled to Namibia, Botswana and South Africa to document the lives of hunter-gatherer communities, the San (Africa’s first people) and their struggles to hang on to their land, culture, and values, as they faced serious threats by outside settlers. Weinberg will discuss his book Traces and Tracks (Jacana Media 2017), the culmination of his thirty-year journey, featuring essays and over 100 photographs that convey the modern-day San’s daily lives, their relationship to nature, game parks, and their ways of adjusting to a...

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    Are Koreans Human? A Lecture with Best-Selling Author Min Jin Lee

    Location: 

    Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge

    Who are the modern Koreans, and what do they care about? Koreans have experienced colonialism, diaspora, war, national division, immigration, and a persistent nuclear threat—and yet, they have achieved extraordinary gains in their homelands and elsewhere. Min Jin Lee, the author of the novels Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko who is working on the third novel of The Koreans trilogy, will explore the will of Koreans to survive and flourish as global citizens, their enduring faith in education, and the costs of such a quest and what it may mean...

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    Exploring Culture Together: Olives! (Afternoon Session)

    Location: 

    Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, 11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge

    Olive fruit and oil have been used for more than 6,000 years as much more than food. In this active experience led by a museum educator, parents and kids will discover the importance of olives in ancient Israel. Families will explore the Houses of Ancient Israel exhibit, craft working olive-oil saucer lamps to take home, handle artifacts, and crown themselves winners in a gallery game with victory wreaths. End the program with an optional olive taste test of products provided by Salt & Olive (Harvard Square).

    Fees...

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    Exploring Culture Together: Olives! (Morning Session)

    Location: 

    Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, 11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge

    Olive fruit and oil have been used for more than 6,000 years as much more than food. In this active experience led by a museum educator, parents and kids will discover the importance of olives in ancient Israel. Families will explore the Houses of Ancient Israel exhibit, craft working olive-oil saucer lamps to take home, handle artifacts, and crown themselves winners in a gallery game with victory wreaths. End the program with an optional olive taste test of products provided by Salt & Olive (Harvard Square).

    Fees are...

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    2019 Feb 09

    Exhibition: The Bauhaus and Harvard

    Repeats every day until Sun Jul 28 2019 .
    (All day)

    Location: 

    Special Exhibitions Gallery, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    The Bauhaus and Harvard — mounted in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany — presents nearly 200 works by 74 artists, drawn almost entirely from the Busch-Reisinger Museum’s extensive Bauhaus collection. Founded in 1919 and closed just 14 years later, the Bauhaus was the 20th century’s most influential school of art, architecture, and design. Harvard University played host to the first Bauhaus exhibition in the United States in 1930, and went on to become an unofficial center for the Bauhaus in America when founding...

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    Opening Celebration: “The Bauhaus and Harvard”

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street Cambridge, MA

    Join us to celebrate the opening of our latest special exhibition, The Bauhaus and Harvard, on view February 8–July 28, 2019.
     
    Following an introduction to the exhibition by curator Laura Muir, Berlin-based artist Judith Raum will present a lecture-performance titled “Fabric in space, fabric out of space.”
     
    Raum’s installations and videos aim to both reconstruct and deconstruct the functional fabrics developed in the Bauhaus weaving workshop. Her...

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    Norman Kelley, “Things not as they are”

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Stubbins, Room 112, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA

    Norman Kelley is an architecture and design collaborative based in Chicago and New Orleans. Founded in 2012 by Carrie Norman and Thomas Kelley, their work draws on the limits between two- and three-dimensions. Results vary in scale and medium: site-specific drawings, furniture, and architectural interiors. Thomas Kelley is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a fellow of the American Academy in Rome. Carrie Norman is a registered architect (Louisiana, Illinois, and New York) and an Assistant Professor at Tulane...

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    Beate Hølmebakk, “Constructions on Sites and Paper”

    Location: 

    Gund Hall Piper Auditorium, Harvard Graduate School of Design, 48 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA

    The lecture will be a presentation of selected projects by manthey kula. It will focus on built work, but also on one of the office’s unbuilt “paper projects”. Beate Hølmebakk will talk about manthey kula’s approach to design and about how some of the professors from her own education; Sverre Fehn, Christian Norberg-Schulz and John Hejduk have had an influence on the work of the office.

    RSVP Requirements: Free and ...

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    Exhibition Opening: "Future Fossil"

    Location: 

    Johnson-Kulukundis Family Gallery, Byerly Hall, 8 Garden Street Cambridge, MA 02138

    In a newly commissioned exhibition, artist Clarissa Tossin considers the ecology of an uncertain future. Inspired by Octavia E. Butler’s science fiction trilogy Xenogenesis (1989), in which the Amazon becomes the site for a new civilization of alien-human hybrids, Tossin speculates upon a postapocalyptic world following ecological collapse. Pairing DIY plastic recycling techniques with the materials and practices of Amazonian aesthetic traditions, Tossin highlights the contemporary footprint left in the geological sedimentation of the earth. These new works consider...

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    2019 Jan 03

    Jace Clayton, "The Great Salt"

    Repeats every day until Mon Feb 04 2019 .
    (All day)

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA

    In 1638, a work of silver known as The Great Salt arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Owned by John Glover, who died during his passage across the Atlantic, the object transferred to Glover’s widow Elizabeth, who later married Henry Dunster, the first president of Harvard. The Great Salt (on display in the silver cabinet on Level 2, Gallery 2340) is one of seven pieces of historic...

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    Clay—Modeling African Design

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA

    This exhibition highlights artistic innovation and creativity in Africa as seen primarily through the traditions of ceramic arts from across the continent and over its long history. Countering the assumption that African arts and societies are largely unchanging and bound to traditions and customs, the remarkable diversity of objects and styles on display here tells a different story. A selection of more than 50 works on loan from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, including those by newly discovered Nigerian artist Alice Osayewe, are shown alongside...

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    Tour: Animal-Shaped Vessels from the Ancient World: Feasting with Gods, Heroes, and Kings

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA

    Join us for an in-depth tour of our special exhibition Animal-Shaped Vessels from the Ancient World: Feasting with Gods, Heroes, and Kings, on view through January 6, 2019. Tours will be given by curators, graduate students, and other experts.

    This tour will end with an optional close-up encounter with objects related to the Animal-Shaped Vessels exhibition in the museums’ Art Study Center. Please be prepared to...

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    Lecture and Book Signing: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America

    Location: 

    Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

    After World War II, evolutionary scientists began rethinking their views on humanity’s past. What if human history was not merely a cooperative struggle against a harsh environment? What if violence and war were normal states of existence, punctuated by brief moments of peace? These are the questions Erika Lorraine Milam explores in her new book, Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America. She will discuss how anthropologists and zoologists during the Cold-War era struggled to reconcile humanity’s triumph as a species with the possibility that this...

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