Events

    Shigeru Ban, "Balancing Architectural Works and Social Contributions"

    Location: 

    Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium (48 Quincy St., Cambridge)

    Shigeru Ban was born in Tokyo in 1957. After studying architecture in the United States, he established Shigeru Ban Architects in Tokyo in 1985. He currently has offices in Tokyo, Paris, and New York. Known for his innovative architecture using wood, paper, and bamboo, his designs, coupled with his commitment to environmental and ecological design, have received numerous awards and constant recognition from prominent institutions around the world.

    In 1995, he founded the NGO VAN (Voluntary Architects Network). Asking himself what architects can do to benefit society, he has...

    Read more about Shigeru Ban, "Balancing Architectural Works and Social Contributions"

    Water Stories: River Goddesses, Ancestral Rites, and Climate Crisis Opening Event

    Location: 

    Harvard Radcliffe Institute—Online

    In this opening discussion for the exhibition, Water Stories: River Goddesses, Ancestral Rites, and Climate Crisis, exhibition curator and faculty director Jinah Kim will engage in conversation with art historian Yukio Lippit and Radcliffe’s curator of exhibitions, Meg Rotzel.

    Harvard Radcliffe Institute's exhibition, Water Stories: River Goddesses, Ancestral Rites, and Climate Crisis (on view September 18–December 16, 2023), presents artworks that tell alternative stories of water experiences in the context of climate change. They treat water not as a...

    Read more about Water Stories: River Goddesses, Ancestral Rites, and Climate Crisis Opening Event

    ¡Celebremos El Salvador!

    Location: 

    Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford St., Cambridge

    Celebrate the vibrant culture and natural history of El Salvador. Enjoy captivating folk dances by Grupo Torogoz and try hands-on activities including corn grinding and painting with cochineal insects. Go on a scavenger hunt and discover the rich heritage of animals, minerals, and artifacts from the region. Join an archaeologist for a live-streamed tour of Joya de Cerén, the Pompeii of Latin America. Take a break with Spanish Story Time, enjoy traditional Salvadoran cuisine (available for purchase), and enter a raffle to win a museum gift basket.

    All are welcome to explore,...

    Read more about ¡Celebremos El Salvador!

    Spotlight Tour: Visions of America, with Hannah Gadway '25

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    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...

    Read more about Spotlight Tour: Visions of America, with Hannah Gadway '25

    Spotlight Tour: The Body as Life Force, with Sophia Pasalis '25

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    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...

    Read more about Spotlight Tour: The Body as Life Force, with Sophia Pasalis '25

    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 Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin (1888), a painting by Vincent Van Gogh; Odalisque,...

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

    U.S. Citizenship Course

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    Prepare for the U.S. citizenship exam with art at the Harvard Art Museums!

    In partnership with the St. Mark Community Education Program, the Harvard Art Museums are pleased to offer a free 10-week course that will prepare students to answer the exam’s 100 civics questions and offer instruction to improve their English language skills.

    Learn more and sign up.

    To be eligible for...

    Read more about U.S. Citizenship Course

    Sylvester Baxter Lecture: Kongjian Yu

    Location: 

    Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium (48 Quincy St. Cambridge)

    Join the Harvard Graduate School of Design for a Sylvester Baxter Lecture featuring Kongjian Yu.

    Kongjian Yu, DDes '95, is Professor and founding dean of Peking University College of Architecture and Landscape, and founder and design principal of Turenscape. Yu’s guiding design principles are the appreciation of the ordinary and a deep embrace of nature—even of its potentially destructive aspects, such as flooding. His projects have won numerous international design awards, including 14 ASLA Excellence...

    Read more about Sylvester Baxter Lecture: Kongjian Yu

    MULTIHYPHENATE: Sean Canty, Zeina Koreitem, and John May introduce Harvard Design Magazine #51

    Location: 

    Gund Hall, Frances Loeb Library Lobby (48 Quincy St., Cambridge)

    Sean Canty, Zeina Koreitem, and John May will discuss the ideas and concerns that animated their editorial vision for Harvard Design Magazine #51: Multihyphenate, and its relationship to their co-curated exhibition, Multihypehnation, on view in the Druker Design Gallery (August 30 – October 9, 2023).

    While launched in tandem with one another, the magazine and the exhibition aim to explore the notion of multihyphenation in various fields of cultural production from different vantage points. Their conversation will highlight the similarities and differences between...

    Read more about MULTIHYPHENATE: Sean Canty, Zeina Koreitem, and John May introduce Harvard Design Magazine #51

    Harvard Public Art & Culture Tour

    Location: 

    Multiple locations in Harvard Square, Cambridge and along Western Avenue, Allston

    Discover a new world of public art in and around Allston and Cambridge! Choose a self-guided tour and learn the captivating stories behind a variety of artworks and their artists. You’ll explore big names in art and architecture, thought-provoking contemporary installations, longstanding cultural institutions—and be amazed as hidden gems reveal themselves in plain sight!

    Learn more and download.

    ...

    Read more about Harvard Public Art & Culture Tour

    Arcade Radio

    Location: 

    Smith Campus Center Arcade, 1350 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge

    Arcade Radio, hit music program from the Summer Staycation series, has been renewed for Fall Semester! Light refreshments and live acoustic performances light up the Smith Center Arcade. Sprinkling music into every Monday! No registration required.

    Learn more.

    Read more about Arcade Radio

    Spotlight Tour: Food for Thought, with Hannah Gadway ’25

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    On this tour, Hannah Gadway ’25 will explore food-inspired works of art from the past to reflect on our attitudes about food today. Among the works discussed will be a gourd-shaped ewer made in Korea in the 12th century, The Breakfast Table (1883–84), an oil painting made in Paris by John Singer Sargent, and Pear Tree (1903), an oil painting made in Austria by Gustav Klimt.

    Learn more.

    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...

    Read more about Spotlight Tour: Women’s Health and Art, with Eve Crompton ’24

    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...

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

    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.

    ...

    Read more about Spotlight Tour: Deconstructing Disorientation, with Emily Feng ’25

    Where We Belong: Tree Chuangs Opening

    Location: 

    Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford St., Cambridge

    Three site-specific textile sculptures, designed by artist Xinan Ran and collaboratively created with local communities, sway from tree branches and invite us to connect to experiences of belonging. Seventy-five individual pieces are combined into a traditional Chinese chuang—a cylindrical textile commonly used in Buddhism. The works encourage us to see all the different ways in which we belong and learn to connect to each other. Join us for iced tea, potluck desserts, and an open mic to share your own response.

    Rain location: Earth and Planetary Sciences...

    Read more about Where We Belong: Tree Chuangs Opening

    Little Amal: Finding Friends in Harvard Yard

    Location: 

    Harvard Science Center Plaza, 1 Oxford St., Cambridge

    All are invited to join the University and Cambridge communities as we welcome Little Amal to Harvard. As Amal approaches the historic gates, she wonders, "What is this place, and is it for me?" Join her to experience the sights, sounds, and energy of Harvard’s vibrant community and to discover what lies inside its gates.

    Event schedule:

    • 6:00pm, Harvard’s Science Center Plaza: Get ready to welcome Amal with free food, artistic creation, and opportunities to learn more about the international refugee crisis
    • ...
    Read more about Little Amal: Finding Friends in Harvard Yard

Pages