Arts & Culture

All Arts & Culture

  • Taking it all personally

    Now through Dec. 30 at Harvard’s Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, a series of photos shines a light on the America that author and social critic James Baldwin was responding to with his words. “Time is Now: Photography and Social Change in James Baldwin’s America” tracks the social unrest that drove his writing and reflect turbulent times past and present.

    Vietnam War protesters march in Chicago in 1968 holding sign reading "Unite or perish."
  • Celebrating a decade of musical theater

    The American Repertory Theater’s production of “ExtraOrdinary” samples a decade of musicals while tapping into performers’ stories.

    ExtraOrdinaryOpeningNight
  • Funny, creepy, or both?

    “The Laughing Room,” brainchild of Harvard metaLab researcher Jonny Sun, uses an algorithm to turn library visitors into performers.

    In 'Laughing Room' installation, people sit on couches, laughing.
  • The nature of sounds

    Composer David Rothenberg ’84 will bring the sounds of outdoors inside for a demonstration and discussion that features his unique ability to perform with nature.

  • An artist of the avant-garde and the everyday

    A whimsical artist’s work is being celebrated in the exhibit “Introducing Tony Conrad: A Retrospective” at Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts and MIT’s List Visual Arts Center.

    Introducing Tony Conrad: A Retrospective.
  • Forum plots a ‘Pathway’ to careers in music or entertainment

    Panelists at the Office of Career Services’ Music & Entertainment Pathways forum said the best way to a career in music or entertainment may well be networking.

  • How Tut became Tut

    Christina Riggs of the University of East Anglia previewed her forthcoming book, “Photographing Tutankhamun: Archaeology, Ancient Egypt, and the Archive,” in a Harvard lecture.

    The golden death mask of Tutankhamun.
  • The life and legacy of Gore Vidal

    Author Gore Vidal left his papers and library to the University. The fruits of that gift, combined with an earlier gift of a portion of his papers in 2001, have been meticulously cataloged and archived at Houghton Library.

    William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal debate.
  • As a backdrop for the movies, it’s a natural

    Columbia Pictures transforms Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum into a Paris park as it films the American classic “Little Women.”

    'Little Women' filmed at Arnold Arboretum.
  • Bringing ‘Coco’ to campus

    Harvard’s Office for the Arts will welcome producer Darla Anderson and cultural consultant Marcela Davison Aviles for a conversation about their work on the Academy Award-winning Pixar film “Coco.”

    Pixar's "Coco"
  • Immigration, under the stage lights

    At Harvard, a Houghton Library exhibit showcases the influence of immigration on American theater.

  • Stories that haunt them

    In the days before Halloween, we asked Min Jin Lee, Maria Tatar, and other serious campus readers to share with us the stories that have scared them most — and why.

    Illustration of frightened reader peering over "Dracula."
  • A professor’s journey to belief

    As part of a speaker series, Professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad shares his winding past toward belief.

    Khalil Gibran Muhammad and Khalil Abdur-Rashid.
  • Watching ‘Scandal’ in a Faulkner state of mind

    For “Faulkner, Interracialism and Popular Television,” Harvard’s Linda Chavers pairs the white Southern writer’s work with the TV series “Scandal” from African-American writer-producer Shonda Rhimes.

    Linda Chavers
  • The plot, and the fog, thicken

    Fujiko Nakaya’s climate-responsive fog sculpture at Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum set the stage for a special twilight performance of “Macbeth.”

  • The beetles have landed

    “The Rockefeller Beetles,” a new exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, features hundreds of specimens from an exceptional collection that reflects the story of a man whose childhood pursuit grew into a lifelong passion.

    Family Buprestidae, Species Chrysochroa fulminans beetles
  • Coetzee recalls a reading childhood

    Accepting the Mahindra Award for Global Distinction in the Humanities, Nobelist author J.M. Coetzee treated the audience filling Sanders Theatre to thoughts about his earliest reading and the concept of a mother tongue.

    J.M. Coetzee.
  • The search for a California sphinx

    At what other event would you hear, “This time there would be no Jell-O?” mused Egyptologist Peter Der Manuelian last Wednesday at the Harvard Art Museums. It sounded like a…

    Scene from “The Ten Commandments,” 1923.
  • The great eight

    Bestowed by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, eight laureates received the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal at Sanders Theatre for their contributions to African and African-American history and culture.

    Du Bois Medalists
  • From the page to the stage

    Composer and writer Min Kahng talks about how he created his musical “Four Immigrants” in advance of his Harvard visit.

    “The Four Immigrants: An American Musical Manga”
  • Why did Jill Lepore write an epic of U.S. history? It’s a long story

    Lepore speaks with the Gazette about our shared past, her central argument, Supreme Court fan mail, and more.

  • The poetic perspective

    Amanda Gorman, the inaugural U.S. youth poet laureate and a Harvard junior, wrote a poem for Harvard President Larry Bacow’s inauguration based on the University’s history, Bacow’s love of running, and his approach to the job that emphasizes the long-term nature of achievement and the importance of working together toward change.

  • The serious business of comics

    During Harvard visit, artist Scott McCloud explains how comics can promote a new way of seeing.

  • Special exhibits mark Bacow inauguration

    To honor its past and its future, Harvard will offer special exhibits on Oct. 4 and 5 during the inauguration of Larry Bacow, the University’s 29th president.

  • Anthropology with a family touch

    Eight expeditions to the Kalahari Desert by a Cambridge family in the 1950s yielded more than 40,000 photographs that captured hunter-gatherer cultures on the verge of disappearing. Many of the photos are now on view at Harvard’s Peabody Museum in a new exhibit, “Kalahari Perspectives: Anthropology, Photography, and the Marshall Family.”

    Ian Wallace with daughter Lola at the Peabody Museum.
  • ‘Lens of Love’ focuses on justice

    The Rev. Jonathan Walton’s new book, “A Lens of Love: Reading the Bible in its World for Our World,” is an exploration of his interpretive approach, which reads biblical stories through the eyes of the vulnerable and marginalized.

    Jonathan Walton, Harvard
  • Where ideas, tensions converge

    Mayra Rivera draws on her cross-disciplinary background in her role as Harvard’s faculty chair of the Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights.

    Mayra Rivera.
  • Behind an eerie sound, science, espionage, and dashed dreams

    Dorit Chrysler, a musicologist, composer, and leading thereminist, sat down with Harvard physicist John Huth at the Radcliffe Institute on for a conversation set to music.

    Dorit Chrysler plays the theremin.
  • Intoxicating art

    Nearly 60 examples of animal-shaped drinking objects make up “Animal-Shaped Vessels from the Ancient World: Feasting with Gods, Heroes, and Kings,” a new Harvard Art Museums exhibit that celebrates artistry and the exchange of ideas across cultures and centuries.

    Susanne Ebbinghaus.
  • At GSD, a tale of four cities

    At the Graduate School of Design, the exhibit “Urban Intermedia” stands as “an experiment and the beginning of an ongoing discussion on new kinds of practices around the study of cities,” said co-curator Eve Blau.