Arts & Culture

Yo-Yo Ma and Deborah Borda of the New York Philharmonic discuss music as a force for social justice.

Best-selling author Lauren Groff spoke at Radcliffe about her process and her current work, telling her listeners the only way she succeeds with her writing is by failing multiple times before she finally publishes.

A new photo book on Harvard’s Glass Flowers collection will focus on the details that make the models so lifelike.

For last semester’s seminar “Harvard’s Greatest Hits,” David Stern got about a dozen first-year students in a room and had them examine some of the rarest and oldest volumes at Houghton Library, Harvard’s rich and vast repository of art, culture, history and much, much more.

Min Jin Lee, the best-selling author of “Pachinko,” is working on the third work in her Korean diaspora trilogy during her Radcliffe fellowship. Lee’s book explores how Koreans value education.

Two years ago, the Harvard Art Museums purchased “U.S.A. Idioms,” a massive collage and drawing by the contemporary artist Kara Walker, who first rocked the art world in 1994 with silhouettes that evoked the horrors of slavery and its lasting impact. The work is now on display along with a few of Walker’s other pieces.

A live drag performance and extensive transformation accompanied a deep conference discussion at Radcliffe of gender and identity.

More than a century after W.E.B. Du Bois was denied entry to the Harvard Glee Club, the chorus celebrates his life and words.

The A.R.T.’s “Endlings” features characters whose lives are completely foreign from, yet connected to, playwright Celine Song.

The innovation center called the ArtLab, a 9,000-square-foot multiuse space designed to host collaborations, gatherings, film screenings, dance rehearsals, and more, will formally open next fall in Allston, but will be active before then.

Propelled by her viral short story, Harvard alumna Kristen Roupenian publishes her first collection, visits Cambridge.

The first exhibit of the Arts Wing in the Smith Campus Center conveys what Harvard and the larger American community is and can be in terms of its makeup.

A course at the Graduate School of Design takes students from the classroom into Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum, where plants come to life for these landscape architects.

On view at the Carpenter Center, “Liz Magor: Blowout” explores the meaning of objects we’ve discarded.

Ruben Reyes Jr.’s path as a writer led him to found Palabritas, a Latinx literary magazine that provides a supportive space for new and experienced writers

Walter Gropius, who would become a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, founded the Bauhaus movement in Germany and ensured that much of its output would have a final home at the University. An exhibit at the Harvard Art Museums features that material.

The work behind “Cendrillon,” Harvard College Opera’s latest production, shows the passion that makes the undergraduate-run company a unique outlet for students interested in the arts.

Nell Scovell ’82 schools Harvard students in the art and science of joke writing.

A guide to the arts in the Boston area for the chilly (and the warmer) months ahead.

Professor Stephen Greenblatt sits down with Bill Rauch ’84, director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, to discuss a new production of “Othello” now at the A.R.T.

Scholar Stephanie Paulsell discusses her forthcoming book, “Religion around Virginia Woolf,” in which she explores religious elements in the work of one of literature’s most noted atheists.

Federico Cortese, director of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, explains how the choreographer George Balanchine transformed Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” into an American classic.

“Nine Moments for Now,” an exhibit at the Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art in the Hutchins Center, explores social engagement, civic discourse, and the fragility of democracy.

A new Radcliffe exhibit reminds viewers how Harvard astronomer Henrietta Leavitt’s efforts helped unlock mysteries of the cosmos.

Playwright Inua Ellams talks about the research behind “Barber Shop Chronicles,” which is at the American Repertory Theater through Jan. 5.

Geraldine Brooks discussed her work as a war correspondent and her Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction during a visit to Houghton Library sponsored by the Harvard Review.

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.

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

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

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.