Events

    Spotlight Tour: Women’s Health and Art, with Eve Crompton '24

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    In this tour, Eve Crompton ’24 will analyze historical social attitudes toward female health and illness as she examines a selection of representations of women in art. She will look at an Attic grave stele, Woman dying in childbirth (c. 330 BCE); the painting Mother and Child (c. 1901), which Pablo Picasso was inspired to make after visiting a French prison hospital; and Erich Heckel’s painting To the Convalescent Woman (Triptych) (1912–13). An integrative biology student, Crompton aims to address the health inequalities perpetuated by structural barriers and individual prejudices,...

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    Spotlight Tour: Out of This World, with Arielle Frommer '25

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    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. An astrophysics student, Frommer will ask, “How does our...

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    Water Stories with the Artist Atul Bhalla

    Location: 

    Johnson-Kulukundis Family Gallery, Byerly Hall, 8 Garden St., Cambridge

    Join the curator Jinah Kim and the artist Atul Bhalla for a tour of Water Stories: River Goddesses, Ancestral Rites, and Climate Crisis and a discussion of the artwork I was Not Waving but Drowning II.

    After years of observing ecological deterioration and alienation of the river from urban communities, Atul Bhalla ritualistically submerged himself in the Yamuna River, alluringly captured in the set of fourteen serial photographs on loan from the Harvard Art Museums. Kim and Bhalla will discuss this work and its context within the gallery.

    ...

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    Exhibition Tour: Seeing in Art and Medicine

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    Join curator Jen Thum and radiologist Hyewon Hyun for a tour of the exhibition Seeing in Art and Medicine, on view from September 2 to December 30, 2023. Thum and Hyun 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.

    No registration required.

    ...

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    Spotlight Tour: Paths to Abstraction, with Isa Haro ’24

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    On this tour, Isa Haro ’24 will explore how abstraction in art has been practiced, viewed, and enjoyed over time, with three very different examples. She will look at a group of Ming dynasty garden rocks (16th–17th century), which served as focal elements in traditional gardens; Paul Cézanne’s Study of Trees (c. 1904), a radically austere painting that contributed to Cézanne’s renown as a pivotal figure in the history of abstraction; and Alberto Burri’s Legno e rosso 3 (1956), a painting made with lacquered bark and a blowtorch. An art, film, and visual studies student, Haro aims to...

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    Carceral Landscapes

    Location: 

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

    Imprisonment, quite literally, is all around us. The American criminal legal system, especially as it disproportionately incapacitates Black and Brown communities, forms a landscape of retribution and inequity. Carceral Landscapes focuses on the network of prisons, jails, detention centers, and their attendant infrastructure that comprises the backbone of the United States legal system. This symposium aims to expand conversations on the criminal legal system beyond law and police, centering the pivotal—though often unacknowledged—role of design in the construction of carceral...

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    Water Stories: Panel Discussions

    Location: 

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

    Artists whose works are represented in the Water Stories: River Goddesses, Ancestral Rites, and Climate Crisis exhibition will engage with scholars of religion, anthropology, and transnational studies to discuss aesthetic and spiritual experiences of water in the age of climate crisis. Participants will discuss traditional paintings depicting mythological stories along with contemporary works evoking different aesthetic and spiritual experiences of water in the age of climate crisis.

    ...

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    Art, Data, and Surveillance: A Colloquium

    Location: 

    Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge

    In this conversation, Simone Browne and Mimi Ọnụọha will examine how artists have critically grappled with the hidden infrastructures of surveillance today, and explore the consequences of what is made visible through data.

    A reception will follow in the related Surveillance exhibition at the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, Harvard Science Center, 1 Oxford Street, second floor, Cambridge, MA, from 7:30­pm–8:15pm.

    ...

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    Gallery Talk: Seeing in Art and Medicine

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    Join curatorial fellow Sarah Lieberman for an exploration of works in the exhibition Seeing in Art and Medicine, on view from September 2 to December 30, 2023. Lieberman 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.

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    Midday Organ Recital: Carson Cooman

    Location: 

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

    Carson Cooman, composer-in-residence at Memorial Church at Harvard University and organ and choral editor for Lorenz Publishing and Sacred Music Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will perform.

    Recitals are performed on Harvard’s famous 1958 D. A. Flentrop organ. Audience members are invited to lunch quietly while listening.

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    The Living Dead in Ancient Egypt

    Location: 

    Online or at Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge

    “Oh Unas, you have not gone away dead, but alive.” The Pyramid Text quoted here tells us that the ancient Egyptians believed in the continued influence of the dead in the lives of the living. The dead in ancient Egypt were supernatural intermediaries, folk heroes, and some were even deified, worshiped as gods in the Egyptian pantheon.

    This talk will build on the research found in Dr. Troche’s first book, Death, Power, and Apotheosis in Ancient Egypt (Cornell University Press, 2021) and invite audiences to learn about the spectrum of deceased actors in ancient Egypt....

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    Memorials and the Cult of Apology

    Location: 

    Harvard Radcliffe Institute—Online

    Valentina Rozas-Krause is an assistant professor in design and architecture at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, in Chile. She is an architect and a historian of the built environment who focuses on global cultural practices across the Americas and Europe. In this lecture, Rozas-Krause will examine the role that memorials play in symbolic and material reparation after political conflicts.

    ...

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    Solidarity! Exhibition Gallery Tour

    Location: 

    Lia and William Poorvu Gallery, Schlesinger Library, 3 James St., Cambridge

    Join a tour of the Solidarity! Transnational Feminisms Then and Now exhibition led by student guides and staff from the Schlesinger Library.

    Solidarity! Transnational Feminisms Then and Now features 50 years of transnational feminist collections held at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. Through a rich array of materials—including posters, newspapers, photographs, and memorabilia—the exhibition explores the promises and limits of global feminist solidarity, while highlighting the key role of iconography in transnational feminist and...

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    Frederick Law Olmsted Lecture: Anita Berrizbeitia, "The Blue Hills: Charles Eliot’s Design Experiment (1893-1897)"

    Location: 

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

    This lecture explores how developments in the earth sciences—specifically geology, evolutionism, and biogeography—ushered in advances in design methodologies for large public–realm landscapes in late nineteenth-century Boston.

    Speaker: Anita Berrizbeitia
    Berrizbeitia is a Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She served as Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture between 2015-2022 and as Program Director of the Master in Landscape Architecture Degree Programs between 2012-2015. Her research explores...

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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.

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    Spotlight Tour: Out of This World, with Arielle Frommer '25

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    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. An astrophysics student, Frommer will ask, “How does our...

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    Spotlight Tour: Seeing in Art and Medicine, with Genesis Nam '24

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    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 Shutter (2006), a glazed stoneware sculpture by Rosemarie Trockel, and an Attic grave stele, Woman dying in...

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    Spotlight Tour: Deconstructing Disorientation, with Emily Feng '25

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    On this tour, Emily Feng ’25 will explore how certain works of art provoke a sense of disorientation. A student of philosophy and economics, Feng will look closely at three works: Saxon Motif (1964), an oil painting made in West Germany by Georg Baselitz; Zhan Wang’s Sculpture in the Form of a Nine-Hole Scholar’s Rock, made in China in 2001; and The End of the World (1936), a painting by David Alfaro Siqueiros, which he produced in New York City.

    No registration required.

    ...

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    Spotlight Tour: Sensing the Divine, with Hanna Carney '25

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    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...

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    Seeing in Art and Medicine: A Conversation

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    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.

    Learn more and RSVP.

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