Arts & Culture

“Fortunes of the Western,” a new series at the Harvard Film Archive, draws back the curtain on the golden age of Westerns following World War II. The series continues through March 22.

A new take on Black History Month at Harvard initiates a conversation about evolving black identity, through the lenses of Africa and art history.

Harvard’s Villa I Tatti, a treasure of Italian Renaissance scholarship since 1961, has launched an oral history site on its origins with Bernard Berenson, Class of 1887, and its transition from villa to a center for scholars.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, the Gazette partnered with the Woodberry Poetry Room in selecting a poem fitting of the holiday devoted to love.

Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times talks about the importance of public space, his role as a critic, and the art and beauty of architecture. Kimmelman spoke at the Radcliffe Institute on Feb. 6.

Photographer and arts historian Deborah Willis launches the Hutchins Center’s spring series of noontime lectures with a look at modern artists and their radical, racial alterations of iconic art.

Jazz pianist Herbie Hancock begins his post as the 2014 Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard with some wisdom from Miles Davis. Hancock’s next lecture, “Breaking the Rules” will take place Feb. 12.

“The Monuments Men,” a based-on-a-true-story World War II action film that opens in theaters Friday, depicts an international team of middle-aged art experts in uniform who are racing to liberate priceless art from the Nazis. Many of the real-life team members were Harvard-trained.

During Wintersession, nine College students traveled to New York City as A.R.T. interns to help Artistic Director Diane Paulus and her production team in the exciting, exhaustive process of bringing a new production to life. The musical “Witness Uganda” will have its world premiere at the A.R.T. on Feb. 4.

Wynton Marsalis and an all-star ensemble gave a capacity crowd at Sanders Theater a musical history of the roots of jazz in New Orleans.

A visit by a master of traditional Japanese carpentry launches an unusual Harvard exhibit of tools, techniques, and woods that have been used for centuries.

Lauren Greenfield ’87 spoke with a Harvard audience about her 25 years of experience as a photographer and filmmaker as part of the Office for the Arts’ “Harvard JAMS!” series. The sessions connect students and members of the Harvard community with alumni who have made a career in entertainment or the arts.

Broadway star Brian Stokes Mitchell delivers a master class on song interpretation as part of Harvard’s Wintersession program.

Wynton Marsalis will conclude his six-lecture series at Sanders Theatre on Jan. 30. Tickets, which are free, will be available for the Harvard community on Jan. 28 and the public on Jan. 29.

Scot Miller’s photographs from the Maine wilderness, inspired by Thoreau’s “Maine Woods,” are on display at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.

Faculty members share highlights from the reading life.

For the holiday season, the American Repertory Theater is staging “The Light Princess” by George MacDonald, the offbeat story of a girl who, unlike in other fairy tales, saves the prince.

Harvard had a role in the creation of a few of the holiday season’s most durable carols and light tunes, including the haunting English words to “O Holy Night.”

The Silk Road Ensemble was back at Harvard for a residency with faculty, students, and crafting new compositions using the Ganges River as inspiration.

Long, tall, short, and small, the signatures of the famous are housed in many Harvard albums and archives.

A Scholars at Risk panel investigates the universal uses of narrative and the hard-wired human need for storytelling.

“Trans Arts” was a two-hour panel Wednesday of poets, critics, and performers who in some cases identify with the gender opposite from the bodies into which they were born.

Harvard University Press delivers the flavor and idiosyncrasies of our spoken language in a new online version of the acclaimed “Dictionary of American Regional English.”

A.R.T. Artistic Director Diane Paulus and Shakespeare scholar Marjorie Garber collaborated on a fall freshman seminar titled “Theater and Magic.”

For 13 months from 1940 to 1941, Harvard graduate Varian Fry forged papers and planned rescue routes from occupied France for a list of people that reads like a Who’s Who of Europe’s cultural and political elite. Author Julie Orringer is spending her year at Radcliffe working on a novel about Fry’s life.

Farrin Abbas Zadeh, a visiting fellow in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, has mounted an art show called “A Window to Heaven: Motifs of Nature in Life and Dream.”

A revealing exhibit at the Schlesinger Library charts the evolution of Betty Friedan’s seminal work “The Feminine Mystique.” What began as a college reunion survey morphed into a treatise that looked deeply into gender, power, and sexuality.

At the Battle of Gettysburg, Harvard men faced Harvard men, as 11 Union soldiers and three Confederates were killed.

On the eve of a glamorous auction of a 1640 “Bay Psalm Book,” Harvard puts its own rare copy on view at Houghton Library.

Bob Brier of Long Island University traced the history of “Egyptomania” in a Harvard talk.