Arts & Culture
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17 books to soak up this summer
Harvard Library staff recommendations cover romance, fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, memoir, music, politics, history
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What to make? Let the wheels decide.
‘Randomizer’ gets creative gears spinning in ceramic studio
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Writing to the beat of your inner Miles Davis
Jesse McCarthy sees Black authors during Cold War philosophically opting for none of the above, and improvising their own way
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A modern approach to teaching classics
Martin Puchner is using chatbots to bring to life Socrates, Shakespeare, and Thoreau
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Stumbling through fog, disillusionment of 1970s
Francine Prose’s memoir trails fleeing 26-year-old novelist to S.F., her attraction to deeply troubled, fading counterculture hero
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Finding new art in unexpected places
Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies loaning pieces from collection to areas around campus to widen exposure, spark reconsideration
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Creative research at heart of ArtLab
The ArtLab, Harvard’s newest Allston lab, open its doors for some creative research.
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Using art to inspire action
Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and Climate Creatives are using art and design to create an event to help people see the urgent need to act on climate change.
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Judging a book
Clint Smith is a writer and teacher whose collection of poetry, “Counting Descent,” was published in 2016. He is currently working on a doctoral dissertation exploring how people sentenced as juveniles to life without parole make meaning of education while incarcerated.
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Artists in residence make Harvard home
Harvard chamber music veterans, Blodgett Artists-in-Residence the Parker Quartet, will perform this Friday in Paine Hall.
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Bluegrass symphony
Theresa Reno-Weber is a graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and a former lieutenant. She deployed to the Persian Gulf and served as a sea marshal on the first U.S.C.G. cutter to circumnavigate the world. Today, she is president and CEO of Metro United Way in Louisville, Kentucky.
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Breaking artistic boundaries
Located on North Harvard Street, the ArtLab is the University’s latest Allston laboratory devoted to creative inquiry, research, and experimentation. Focused on interdisciplinary artistic collaboration, investigation, and connection, the ArtLab will be open to members of the University and the public this week.
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The artist as witness
“Winslow Homer: Eyewitness,” currently on view at the Harvard Art Museums, traces how the artist’s experience as an observer tasked with accurately documenting the conflict helped shape his career and informed much of his later output.
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Uncommon coinage
Carmen Arnold-Biucchi recently retired after almost two decades as the museums’ first curator of ancient coins. During her tenure she helped bring roughly 2,000 other coins to Harvard, small-scale works of art adorned with mythical creatures, ancient architecture, biblical references, important persons, and poignant dates.
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Fall into art
A sampling of the season’s best in local music, theater, and visual arts.
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Five lessons from Toni Morrison
Harvard Divinity School pays tribute to the late Toni Morrison during its convocation.
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Last dance, last chance
The curtain comes down Sept. 7 on the immersive, disco-insistent “Donkey Show” after a decade-long run at A.R.T.
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The Spice Girls of Henry VIII
“Six,” the hit British musical bound for A.R.T., recasts the six wives of Henry VIII as girl-power pop stars.
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Photography without a camera
Matt Saunders is the incoming director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies
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Research and everyday life
Harvard students are keeping busy with summer research projects across multiple disciplines.
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Connecting with a masterpiece
A small installation on view through November will feature one of the museums’ recent Rembrandt acquisitions, “Four Studies of Male Heads.”
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Out of many, one — band, that is
Members from the Harvard Summer Pops Band share how they became part of the band.
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A colorful figure
In historian Philip Deloria’s new book, “Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract,” he re-examines the art of his “eccentric” great-aunt, particularly her 134 “personality prints,” three-panel pieces inspired, in many cases, by artists and celebrities including Babe Ruth, Gertrude Stein, and Amelia Earhart.
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A new way to read
Stephanie Burt’s new book is a guide to understanding an art form that for many feels difficult to access. She talks about creating a “travel guide” for poetry.
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Boston Ballet dances the night away
The Boston Ballet company spends an afternoon and evening shooting a promotional video in the forest-like setting of Arnold Arboretum.
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A pastoral romance
Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum will stage a fresh take on “Pride and Prejudice,” Jane Austen’s tale of 19th-century love, on June 23 courtesy of the Actor’s Shakespeare Project and playwright Kate Hamill.
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‘There they are, on our dinner plates’
Harvard philosophy professor’s book asks humans to rethink their relationships with animals.
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Summer in the city
Get out your calendar and start planning — this summer brings music, comedy, plays, spoken word, movies, and more to the Boston area.
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An unanticipated juxtaposition
A new pairing on a second-floor wall overlooking the Harvard Art Museums’ courtyard has placed self-portraits of contemporary artist Kerry James Marshall alongside that of 17th-century Dutch painter Nicolas Régnier.
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Uncovering an ancient world
Radcliffe fellow Tuna Şare-Ağtürk’s current book project documents the treasures unearthed at Nicomedia, an ancient Roman city and seat of power for the Emperor Diocletian.
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‘A town hall for the 21st century’
American Repertory Theater announced today it has selected internationally renowned architects Haworth Tompkins to design its future home on Harvard’s Allston campus.
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Reunited with a ‘transcendent’ figure
“I see him as an ambassador to the world,” Harvard alumnus Walter C. Sedgwick says about the “Prince Shōtoku” sculpture he donated to Harvard Art Museums. A recent visit to the museum stirred memories of visiting the sculpture every summer at his grandparents’ home.
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The ‘American Schindler’
Author Julie Orringer’s latest novel, “The Flight Portfolio,” tells the story of Harvard graduate Varian Fry, a journalist and editor sometimes referred to as the “American Schindler,” who worked in France during World War II to help save Jewish members of Europe’s cultural elite from Nazi concentration camps. Orringer worked on the book during a Radcliffe fellowship.
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A revolutionary musical
Brothers Daniel and Patrick Lazour’s musical, “We Live in Cairo,” brings the immediacy of Egypt’s January 25 Revolution to the American Repertory Theater on May 14.
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Armchair travels with a purpose
Digital Giza Project lets scholars virtually visit sites in Egypt and beyond and, even print them in 3-D.
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‘Pride and Prejudice’ coming to Arnold Arboretum
In June, Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum will host an Actors’ Shakespeare Project production of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” adapted by Kate Hamill, in the Leventritt Shrub and Vine Garden.