Arts & Culture

All Arts & Culture

  • Winslow Homer’s Civil War

    Two Harvard experts moderate a gallery talk about Winslow Homer’s beginnings as a Civil War artist.

  • The Widener Memorial Room

    The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Room houses about 3,300 volumes from the book collection of its namesake, a 1907 Harvard graduate who died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic…

  • Tremendous Pipes

    A C.B. Fisk organ, Opus 139, was unveiled Easter Sunday in Harvard’s Memorial Church.

  • Widener Library rises from Titanic tragedy

    The ship disaster a century ago led to the drowning of three men affiliated with Harvard. It also prompted a memorial gift that quickly led to construction of the University’s flagship book repository.

  • Filling a gap between teachers, troubled children

    Child psychiatrist Nancy Rappaport follows up her 2009 memoir that explored her mother’s suicide with a user-friendly guide for teachers dealing with behaviorally challenged students.

  • Piping up, to good effect

    After years of planning, an effort once spearheaded by the late Rev. Peter J. Gomes to install a new organ in the Memorial Church will fill its halls with music.

  • Street artist eL Seed paints at Harvard

    Street artist eL Seed stopped by Harvard to create a “calligraffiti” painting.

  • Where art blends with activism

    Tunisian artist eL Seed took his spray paints out into the cold last week to create an example of “calligraffiti” in the Science Center’s plaza.

  • Film, fact, and fantasy

    Indian-born director Deepa Mehta often shines light on her homeland with films that explore complex and controversial themes. She discussed her creative and collaborative process during a talk at the Radcliffe Gymnasium.

  • Filmmaker who bore witness to Holocaust

    A cinema legend’s advice on making films about unspeakable war crimes: “Go to see the killers.”

  • Artist touts ‘primacy’ of images

    The beauty of art, says William Kentridge in his Norton Lectures, is that it makes “a safe place for uncertainty.”

  • The making of Memorial Hall

    Harvard alumni started discussions about a memorial in May 1865, as the Civil War ended. By December they had chosen a design. Memorial Hall was to be an ornate Gothic Revival structure, with 5,000 square feet of stained glass, a 210-foot tower, intricate slate roofing, and gargoyles sheathed with copper.

  • Portrait of the Tea Party

    New book documents a rising movement of likable people with offbeat ideas, who constitute a major influence on the Republican Party in this presidential election.

  • In tune, without limits

    Violinist Adrian Anantawan was born without a right hand, but has become a renowned professional violinist. He now is enrolled in the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Arts in Education Program, with the goal of helping other disabled students in their artistic and creative development.

  • Blue, gray, and Crimson

    Before the Civil War, Harvard was a microcosm of the complex loyalties and opinions that marked the United States. During the war, it lost more than 200 of its sons.

  • One-handed violinist makes beautiful music

    Adrian Anantawan was born without a right hand, but with an adaptive device became a renowned professional violinist.

  • Prince as ‘knowing big brother’

    The musician Prince’s painful past as a child of divorce is the key to understanding what makes him tick — and what makes him an icon to Generation X, according to Touré, the cultural critic and author. Touré is presenting the Alain LeRoy Locke Lecture Series.

  • Blue

    Scientists tell us blue light will reset body rhythms for sounder sleep and higher alertness. Blue is sky and water; eyes and stones; slumber and spring — with summer right behind.

  • GSAS student joins worldwide discussion

    Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences student Matthew Mugmon will be one of seven panelists convened by the New York Philharmonic for a worldwide, online discussion on Harvard alumni Leonard Bernstein’s groundbreaking tours to the former Soviet Union, Japan, Europe, and South America.

  • On the nature of modern thought

    The story of 15th-century book hunter Poggio Bracciolini and his rediscovery of Lucretius’ “On the Nature of Things” was captured by Cogan University Professor Stephen Greenblatt in his National Book Award-winning account, “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern.”

  • Personal stories of transformation

    A new multimedia collaboration inspired by the A.R.T. production “Wild Swans” aims to capture and spread personal stories from members of the Greater Boston community with ties to China.

  • The return of the murals

    Adolphus Busch Hall, once home to the Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, is amid a major renovation. Recently completed work includes restoration of two once-controversial artworks critical of fascism.

  • Whither Guantánamo

    In his new book, “Guantánamo: An American History,” lecturer Jonathan Hansen uncovers the rich and controversial history of an American empire on the tip of Cuba.

  • Critical preoccupations

    Rem Koolhaas, a professor in practice of architecture and urban design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), shared his thoughts on those and other subjects before an overflow crowd at Piper Auditorium with a presentation titled “Current Preoccupations.”

  • Cast in bronze

    On a chilly afternoon in January, nine students watched in excited amazement as three leather-clad metalsmiths lifted a glowing crucible filled with molten bronze and poured fiery metal into sculpture molds.

  • ‘Body of Work’

    Through her art and articulate explanations of her own struggle with an eating disorder, visiting artist Judith Shaw explained the internal experience of victims of anorexia to her audience at the opening reception of “Body of Work” at the Student Organization Center at Hilles.

  • Casting an impression

    Through studio sessions at the New England Sculpture Service, the course “Cast in Bronze: A Workshop in Exploring and Creating Bronze Sculpture” provided the opportunity not only to create bronze sculptures, but also to better understand the practice and craft of making art.

  • Lady Gaga visits Harvard

    Harvard students braved the snow to welcome Lady Gaga to campus.

  • A work supreme

    During a lecture that is part of a series of master classes sponsored by Harvard’s Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard Professor Ingrid Monson explored the genius behind John Coltrane’s 1965 jazz album “A Love Supreme.”

  • Rousseau occupies Houghton

    On the tricentennial celebration of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s birth, the author and philosopher is being honored with an exhibition of his works at the Houghton Library. “Rousseau and Human Rights” continues through March 23.