Arts & Culture
-
17 books to soak up this summer
Harvard Library staff recommendations cover romance, fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, memoir, music, politics, history
-
What to make? Let the wheels decide.
‘Randomizer’ gets creative gears spinning in ceramic studio
-
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
-
A modern approach to teaching classics
Martin Puchner is using chatbots to bring to life Socrates, Shakespeare, and Thoreau
-
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
-
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
-
From V-2 rocket to moon landing
A new book explores the connections among World War II scientists, the V-2 missile, and the U.S. race to the moon, led by German émigré Wernher von Braun.
-
The Last Supper as Passover
A leading cultural and intellectual historian of Renaissance Europe, Princeton Professor Anthony Grafton suggests that the diligent work of 16th-century scholar Joseph Scaliger, in particular, led to the theory that the Last Supper may well have been in fact a Passover Seder.
-
When religion turned inward
A groundbreaking speech by Ralph Waldo Emerson at Harvard Divinity School in 1838 helped to transform faith, spur the transcendentalist movement, and change the future of Harvard.
-
An artful perspective
Museum educators are using their collections to help members of the Harvard community explore salient issues like creativity and leadership in new ways.
-
Let there be music
As a liberal arts college, Harvard trains its students broadly so they can adapt nimbly to a rapidly changing world. Increasingly, appreciating and participating in music are integral parts of student life.
-
The Nostalgics, a Harvard Motown band
One of the many student-led musical groups on campus, The Nostalgics keep a Detroit sound tradition alive as Harvard’s Motown and soul band.
-
Chicago as urban microcosm
For his new book, Robert Sampson studied the Second City’s ups and downs for 15 years to outline patterns for many modern American cities.
-
Mariachi Véritas de Harvard
Created in 2001, Mariachi Véritas de Harvard is a student-run group that focuses exclusively on the mariachi musical tradition.
-
Harvard Gregorian Chant
Members of the Harvard community gather regularly in the basement of the Memorial Church for an informal hour of Gregorian chant singing under the guidance of Thomas Kelly, Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music.
-
Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra
Founded as the Pierian Sodality in March 1808 by a handful of students, today the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra is a collection of more than 100 accomplished musicians who present four major concerts each year.
-
Madison Greer, solo artist
During her time at Harvard, Jazz singer and junior Madison Greer has developed her skills in music theory and music performance and learned how to “front” a band.
-
Where medicine meets artistry
Transit Gallery at Harvard Medical School, with a new show up, invites busy walkers to slow down and look. Co-exhibitors Svetlana Boym and Deb Todd Wheeler will discuss their work and attend a reception on Feb. 15.
-
Notes on music’s lessons
At Harvard as part of an ongoing lecture and performance series, musician and composer Wynton Marsalis met with the Harvard community for two far-reaching discussions in which music and the arts played seminal roles.
-
In a land of equality, racism
“Queloides,” an art exhibit visiting Harvard, shows how racial stereotypes prevailed even after the Cuban Revolution.
-
The melding of American music
Backed by an all-star band, Wynton Marsalis explored the “mulatto identity of our national music” with a rollicking performance and a thoughtful lecture on America’s porous tuneful genres at Sanders Theatre Feb. 6.
-
A jewel in the light of Tel Aviv
With a new museum wing in Tel Aviv, a Harvard architect offers a middle-ground paradigm for buildings that display art.
-
Sensibly saving Jane Austen
Two of Jane Austen’s letters — thousands of which were written but only dozens of which were preserved — undergo careful repairs at Harvard, where they reside at Houghton Library.
-
The West, plagued by self-doubt
In his new book, noted historian Niall Ferguson sees Europe and America as facing a profound crisis of confidence in what the future holds.
-
String quartet focuses on Schubert
The Music Department’s Blodgett Chamber Music Series will continue with a performance by the Chiara Quartet on Feb. 17. Tickets are free and available at the Harvard Box Office beginning Feb. 3.
-
Marsalis: ‘Meet Me at the Crossroad’
Wynton Marsalis continues his two-year lecture series at Harvard with an exploration of root styles of American music in Sanders Theatre on Feb. 6.
-
Sounds of the Silk Road
The Silk Road Ensemble concluded its January Harvard residence with a Learning From Performers concert featuring four newly commissioned works.
-
Arts prove intensive
Across campus, students participated in a series of arts intensives during January’s Wintersession that let them tap their creative talents.
-
Writing, clear and simple
Clarity and simplicity are frequent themes in the Harvard College Winter Writing Program, a two-week Winter Break seminar where undergraduate nonfiction writers learn from some of the country’s best authors, teachers, and journalists.
-
Devoted to the stage
Anatoly Smeliansky is the founding director of the American Repertory Theater/Moscow Art Theater School Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University. As part of the program, he is spending the month at Harvard leading a series of classes on the history of theater and drama.
-
A key to modernity
Rummaging through worm-eaten layers of parchment at a monastery in southern Germany in 1417, the scribe Poggio Bracciolini discovered a poem titled “De Rerum Natura,” or “On the Nature of Things,” by the Roman philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus. On that day, according to Professor Stephen Greenblatt, history swerved and modernity began.
-
Snapshots of the past
A new online exhibit, the Nicholas V. Artamonoff Collection, presented by the Image Collections and Fieldwork Archive at Dumbarton Oaks, features more than 500 photos that a talented amateur photographer took in Turkey from 1935 through 1945.
-
The art of Walker Evans
The iconic photography of Walker Evans is on exhibit at Mather House’s SNLH Three Columns Gallery through March. John T. Hill, designer and producer of the exhibition, offers special insight into Evans’ life and work.
-
When art advanced science
More than a masterful artist, Albrecht Dürer strongly influenced 16th-century science with cartographic and anatomical work that gets little attention from art historians.
-
Using the bully pulpit
In his new memoir, former Harvard Medical School Dean Joseph Martin recalls a small-town childhood, an attraction to medicine, and the ups and downs of leadership.
-
Adding art to academics
Modern dance instructor Liz Lerman uses a Harvard semester to cross disciplines, deepen understanding, promote research, and increase knowledge.