Arts & Culture

All Arts & Culture

  • A fountain of music

    As part of a course on music composition, Harvard students created original works inspired by objects in the Harvard Art Museums collections. Those compositions were recently brought to life by cellist Neil Heyde of London’s Royal Academy of Music at a concert held in the Calderwood Courtyard.

  • Soccer’s versatile beauty

    Harvard course uses the game of soccer to explore the complexity of the humanities.

  • Plotting her return

    Author ZZ Packer is spending her Radcliffe year working on her newest effort, a novel titled “The Thousands” that tracks the lives of several families following the Civil War through the American Indian campaigns in the Southwest.

  • Making print modern

    In an age of bits and bytes and pixels and text on screens, Harvard Design Magazine — relaunched in a new format last year ― fervently embraces the thingness of print, the quotidian actuality of paper and ink.

  • Revealed in verse

    Henri Cole is working on a new collection of poems while a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

  • The wrong way forward

    In May, Matt Aucoin’s “Crossing” will premiere with the American Repertory Theater as part of the theater’s commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

  • A literary colossus

    The new Murty Classical Library of India from Harvard University Press, aiming for 500 volumes over the next century, will reveal to the world a “colossal Indian past” of multilanguage literary history from as far back as two millennia.

  • The spectacle of Ghungroo

    The Harvard South Asian Association’s annual arts showcase, called Ghungroo, is a complex coordinated production that draws hundreds of student performers and delighted classmates in the audience.

  • The rule-breaking Sisters Grimke

    “Exiled by the sound of the lash” from the slaveholding state of South Carolina, the Grimké sisters came North before the Civil War with rule-breaking ideas on slavery’s wrongs and women’s rights. They represented an antebellum moment in which “women became political.”

  • Scrolling through the galleries

    A series of virtual tours enables a deep dive into selected pieces at the Harvard Art Museums.

  • Legacy of resolve

    Escaped slave and abolitionist Lewis Hayden’s work goes on, through the students who receive the scholarship established in his name at Harvard Medical School.

  • ‘Revolutionary’ writing earns prize nomination

    One of the nation’s largest and most prestigious literary awards, the George Washington Book Prize recognizes the best new books on early American history.

  • Evaluating the Oscars

    Film critic A.O. Scott spoke with the Gazette about the current crop of Oscar contenders, and Hollywood’s trends.

  • A.O. Scott reviews himself

    In a question-and-answer interview, New York Times film critic and Harvard alumnus A.O. Scott explains his craft, and how he came to it.

  • Slavery’s lost lives, found

    Historian Richard Dunn talks about his new book, a sweeping historical analysis of life on two plantations in Jamaica and Virginia across the final decades of slavery.

  • Toward total war

    Experts on World War I gathered for a conference on the “great seminal catastrophe” of the 20th century.

  • Unmasking minstrelsy

    A new exhibition at Harvard’s Loeb Music Library, containing items from the Harvard Theatre Collection in Houghton Library, offers visitors a disturbing look at the racist history and enduring legacy of blackface minstrelsy.

  • Dimensions of war, including peace

    A new Harvard-wide seminar program, slated for three years, takes on a constellation of interdisciplinary issues around violence and nonviolence.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Upholding complexity

    Pulitzer Prize-winner Suzan-Lori Parks returns to the American Repertory Theater with her new play, “Father Comes Home From the Wars.”

  • Standing up for ‘Selma’

    “Selma” director Ava DuVernay discussed the film with Henry Louis Gates in an event sponsored by Harvard’s Hutchins Center.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Encounters with Tennessee Williams

    A comprehensive collection of material at Houghton Library shines a light on the life and work of Tennessee Williams.