Arts & Culture
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When to quit a book
Some give up without guilt while others insist going cover to cover. Harvard readers share their criteria.
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Lace up gloves, enter ring, and write
Novelist and boxer Laura van den Berg says the two practices have a lot in common
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Unearthed papyrus contains lost scenes from Euripides’ plays
Alums help identify, decipher ‘one of the most significant new finds in Greek literature in this century’
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A photographer who makes historical subjects dance
Wendel White manifests the impetus behind his new monograph during Harvard talk
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LeVar Burton got his Du Bois Medal, and the crowd couldn’t resist
‘Reading Rainbow’ theme breaks out at ceremony honoring Black luminaries — including trailblazers in sports, arts, politics, and more
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When the act of writing itself is part of the art
Calligrapher Wang Dongling creates piece with ‘chaotic script’ before Harvard Art Museums audience
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Flaherty retrospective to include Irish gem
The Harvard Film Archive is launching a retrospective of the work of Robert J. Flaherty, a pioneer in documentary film. “Folklore and Flaherty: A Symposium on the First Irish-Language Film” will be held on Feb. 19 from 1:30 to 4 p.m. at the Harvard Film Archive.
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In 1944, Broadway subversion
In 1944, the young and gifted creators of ‘On the Town’ quietly stirred diversity into their groundbreaking musical, Professor Carol Oja recounts in her new book.
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Upholding complexity
Pulitzer Prize-winner Suzan-Lori Parks returns to the American Repertory Theater with her new play, “Father Comes Home From the Wars.”
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Standing up for ‘Selma’
“Selma” director Ava DuVernay discussed the film with Henry Louis Gates in an event sponsored by Harvard’s Hutchins Center.
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The personal Civil War
Drawn from a series of family correspondence, letters, diaries, and journals, a new exhibit at the Schlesinger Library offers firsthand accounts of men, women, soldiers, and slaves caught up in the Civil War.
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The old, made new
The Harvard Semitic Museum, hosting a retrospective exhibit on its long history and founder David Gordon Lyon, is refurbished, reordered, and increasingly ready for the future.
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Glimpsing Dublin from the wine-dark sea
Humanities 10, a new two-semester offering, is a big class on the big books, with time out for small seminars.
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A bittersweet confection
Visual artist Kara Walker talks about “A Subtlety,” her provocative public art project staged at a defunct Domino sugar factory in Brooklyn last summer.
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A journey into illness
Poet and memoirist Meghan O’Rourke is using her time as a Radcliffe Fellow to write “What’s Wrong With Me,” a chronicle of her struggles with autoimmune disease.
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Pulling art from the bin
The new American Repertory Theater play “O.P.C.” examines the culture of consumerism while the production team takes the message to heart.
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Angela Lansbury’s long run
From the 7-year-old terrified by “King Kong” to the 89-year-old still bravely stepping out on stage, Angela Lansbury reflects on her 70 years in show business.
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Encounters with Tennessee Williams
A comprehensive collection of material at Houghton Library shines a light on the life and work of Tennessee Williams.
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Lansbury returns to Harvard
Stage, screen, and television icon Angela Lansbury, at 89, makes her second visit to Harvard, for a screening of a film at the Harvard Film Archive.
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The mission of art museums
In 20 years as the director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Malcolm Rogers has often courted controversy with his enthusiastic embrace not only of new media, but new definitions of art itself. Rogers gave the Lowell Lecture at Emerson Hall on Thursday evening.
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Daoism’s ongoing influence
James Robson, professor of East Asian languages and civilizations, has edited the Daoism volume of “The Norton Anthology of World Religions.”
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Activating a new space
A select group of Harvard students witnessed the installation of a kinetic sculpture in the Harvard Art Museums by contemporary German artist Rebecca Horn on Nov. 5.
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Ukraine comes into focus on film
Harvard Library is sponsoring a series of films by Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa in conjunction with its exhibit “Lives of the Great Patriotic War.” The film series continues Nov. 15 and 17. The exhibit is open through Nov. 26 at the Pusey Library.
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Foreshadowing feminism
Organizing and canvassing for anti-slavery petitions by women from 1833 to 1845 was a transformational training ground for suffragettes and other social activists following the Civil War.
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A sense of Wonder
Harvard historian discusses the topic of her latest book, “The Secret History of Wonder Woman.”
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Art’s shining future
The renovated and expanded Harvard Art Museums reopen on Nov. 16 with a new building designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano that unites the Fogg Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum under one shining glass roof.
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Harvard’s new home for art
After six years, the Harvard Art Museums will reopen to the public on Nov. 16. The renovation and restoration has united the Fogg Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum under a spectacular glass roof. Get an inside look at the Harvard Art Museums’ transformation in Monday’s daily Gazette, which will feature a special edition dedicated exclusively to the renovation and reopening.
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‘Dream Songs’ and demons
This month John Berryman’s longtime publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is marking his 100th birthday by reissuing some of his best-known work.
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Literary devotion
Author Russell Banks talks about the search for spiritual meaning, in life and fiction, ahead of delivering the Divinity School’s 2014 Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality. The lecture will be held Nov. 5 at Sanders Theatre.
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Forgotten Jewish fighters
Pusey Library exhibit “Lives of the Great Patriotic War” is a multimedia glimpse at surviving Jewish veterans whose presence in the Red Army is a little-known story.
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Making ‘The Friedkin Connection’ at Harvard
A gift to the Harvard Library from William Friedkin, the Academy Award-winning director/producer of such films as “The Exorcist” and “The French Connection,” will mark a new kind of collection for Harvard — cinema memoir.
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Is that Wallace Stevens?
Helen Vendler joined a Woodberry Poetry Room event to celebrate the recent discovery of recordings of readings by Wallace Stevens circa 1954.
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Cooper Gallery makes an entrance
Architect and curator David Adjaye, co-curator Mariane Ibrahim-Lenhardt, art collector Jean Pigozzi, and Director Vera Grant led an open house and tour of the new Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art, which will open this week.
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Building outward
New director James Voorhies hopes to make the Carpenter Center a more inviting space.
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Hanging a welcome sign for art
Thomas W. Lentz, director of the Harvard Art Museums, led a panel discussion about the role of the university art museum as a laboratory for learning in an academic setting and in the broader cultural ecosystem.
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‘Fight Church’ raises some questions
Can you love your neighbor as you punch him in the face? That’s one question posed by “Fight Church,” a documentary that will be screened on Monday during an event hosted by the Science, Religion, and Culture Program at Harvard Divinity School.