On this tour, Hanna Carney ’25 will look at multisensory religious experiences as portrayed in art and the significant role they play in people’s lives. Featured works include a bronze ritual wine vessel (late 11th–early 10th century BCE), cast in China during the Zhou dynasty, and The Miracle of the Sacred Fire, Church of the Holy Sepulchre (1892–99), an ambitious painting by Englishman William Holman Hunt, based on his multiple trips to the Holy Land. Emerging from Carney’s studies of comparative religion and the history of art and architecture, the tour encourages visitors to embrace...
Join us for a lively conversation about the exhibition Seeing in Art and Medicine and the museums’ medical humanities program that inspired it. Presenters include the program’s founders, Hyewon Hyun and David Odo, and exhibition curator Jen Thum. The talk will also include interactive segments based on the work of the program.
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge
Join us for an Artist Talk and Opening Reception to celebrate the opening of This Machine Creates Opacities: Robert Fulton, Renée Green, Pierre Huyghe, and Pope.L.
Artist Pope.L will present an artist talk that touches on his project Corbu Pops, which was originally commissioned for the Carpenter Center’s level 1 space in 2009. Various installation elements of this pivotal work have been restaged for This Machine Creates Opacities.
Following the conversation, there will be a reception and community dinner in the sunken terrace on Level 1...
The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, 60 Garden St., Cambridge
Become an astronomer for a day! Come visit us on Observatory Hill, and see what the Center for Astrophysics has been up to. Enjoy exploration stations that include hands-on activities, telescope tours, and solar observing. There’s even an opportunity to ask our scientists all of your burning space questions at our “Ask an Astronomer” tables.
Find out the latest discoveries about the sun, exoplanets, and black holes and take your own telescope images using our robotic telescopes, or go on a virtual tour of space using the World Wide Telescope visualization lab- It’s out of this...
Join Jen Thum and Caitlin Clerkin for a conversation about a recently refreshed display of ancient Egyptian reliefs from tombs, which places the spotlight on ancient people and processes, as well as provenance.
Join us for an evening of art, fun, food, and more! This event is free and open to everyone.
Gather with friends and mingle inside our Italian-inspired courtyard while taking in the smooth sounds from DJ C-Zone. Browse the museum shop and chat over a snack or drink for purchase from local vendors. And of course, wander the galleries to take in our world-class art collections—over 50 galleries to explore! Don’t forget to check out the current exhibitions.
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.
Harvard Science Center, Room 252, 1 Oxford St., Cambridge
Take a closer look at Surveillance: From Vision to Data, on view at Harvard’s Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments. Join the curators for a talk introducing select objects, the multiple legacies of surveillance through data, and critical artworks that have resisted now ubiquitous data-driven surveillance. Then tour the exhibit to see for yourself how data shapes the nature of surveillance.
In conjunction with the exhibition Objects of Addiction: Opium, Empire, and the Chinese Art Trade, join the Harvard Art Museums for a discussion about the opioid crisis, featuring specialists in addiction medicine, harm reduction, and public health policy.
On this tour, Arielle Frommer ’25 will explore the intersection of art and astronomy in three works: Light Prop for an Electric Stage [Light-Space Modulator] (1930), a reflective kinetic sculpture by László Moholy-Nagy, who had been a professor at the Bauhaus in Germany; Prince Shōtoku at Age Two (datable to about 1292), an iconic Buddhist sculpture from Japan; and The Gare Saint-Lazare: Arrival of a Train (1877), a large canvas that Claude Monet painted in Paris, soon after he began painting in the Impressionist style.
On this tour, Hanna Carney ’25 will look at multisensory religious experiences as portrayed in art and the significant role they play in people’s lives. Featured works include a bronze ritual wine vessel (late 11th–early 10th century BCE), cast in China during the Zhou dynasty, and The Miracle of the Sacred Fire, Church of the Holy Sepulchre (1892–99), an ambitious painting by Englishman William Holman Hunt, based on his multiple trips to the Holy Land. Emerging from Carney’s studies of comparative religion and the history of art and architecture, the tour encourages visitors to...
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...
Join curators Jen Thum and Laura Muir for a tour of the exhibition Seeing in Art and Medicine, on view from September 2 to December 30, 2023. Thum and Muir will share insights about the museums’ medical humanities program for radiologists—on which the exhibition is based—the curatorial process, and what can be gleaned through close looking.
Ceramics Program, Office for the Arts at Harvard, 224 Western Ave., Allston
2022-23 Ceramics Program Artist In Residence Nicolas Touron and glass artist Amy Lemaire's ongoing collaboration explores the shapes of the natural world using 3d ceramic printing and glass. The works in Nature 2.0were produced and developed in the new 3D clay printing area of the Ceramics Program, Office for the Arts at Harvard. Join us on September 22 from 5-7pm for a reception with the artists.
Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, 1 Oxford St., Cambridge
This timely exhibit considers surveillance beyond the realm of cameras and their watchers, exposing the profound influence of data. Learn about the historical instruments that have been used to transform individuals and landscapes into data. Uncover how powerful entities, from colonial empires to U.S. intelligence agencies, have harnessed surveillance data to produce and perpetuate hierarchies of human difference. Immerse yourself in interactive critical artworks that challenge and resist surveillance through data. Look beyond vision and toward data to reveal an elusive, and now...
On this tour, Hannah Gadway '25 will explore how works of art have envisioned the past, present, and future of the United States and will highlight their place in the Harvard Art Museums’ free U.S. Citizenship Course. Offered in partnership with the St. Mark Community Education Program, and featuring special tours led by Harvard students, this course prepares aspiring citizens for the naturalization test.
The stops on the tour include Charles Willson Peale’s 1784 portrait of General George Washington awaiting the British surrender at Yorktown; Rocky Mountains, “Lander’s...
On this tour, Sophia Pasalis ’25 will explore three works that celebrate life through the representation of the body. Grounded in questions of materiality and composition, the tour features an earthenware sculpture of a female figure from China (Majiayao culture, Machang phase, 2350–2050 BCE); Auguste Rodin’s anatomically explicit sculpture Iris, Messenger of the Gods [Another Voice, Called Iris], made in France (c. 1890–91); and Harlequin Nude (1956), a lavishly painted canvas by Karel Appel, who was associated with CoBrA, a postwar international avant-garde movement...
On this tour, Genesis Nam ’24 will put visitors in the shoes of the radiologists who have participated in the Seeing in Art and Medical Imaging program, which is offered by the Harvard Art Museums in partnership with Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The program promotes empathy, mindfulness, and tolerance for ambiguity in the medical community through conversations about works of art, focused on themes such as care, objectivity, and power.
The stops on the tour are Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin (1888), a painting by Vincent Van Gogh; Odalisque,...
Join associate curator Sarah Laursen for a lecture on opium and Chinese art—two influential commodities traded in China, the British Empire, and Massachusetts between the 18th and early 20th centuries.
Join curator Jen Thum for an exploration of works in the exhibition Seeing in Art and Medicine, on view from September 2 to December 30, 2023. Thum will share insights about the museums’ medical humanities program for radiologists—on which the exhibition is based—and what can be gleaned through close looking.