Arts & Culture

Harvard Medical School’s Jonathan Beckwith has used his course “Social Issues in Biology” to teach students about the societal implications of science, and now he is collaborating with a Harvard alum Calla Videt to bring his message to the stage.

A diehard interpreter of the great American songbook and musical theater repertory, Barbara Cook surprised the audience at a recent Harvard master class by quoting a maverick music-maker.

Biographer Walter Isaacson shared his insights into the minds and makeup of three of America’s greatest thinkers, who helped to change the world.

Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, soon turning 50, was celebrated at the Graduate School of Design through a visit from its first director, Eduard Sekler, along with early faculty and students.

The Harvard Glee Club and a Dorchester boys choir have joined forces over the past two years, performing together in concerts and at services, and establishing a fellowship.

A panel of experts discussed the study of humanities in the digital age, and how humanists’ skill set is well-suited for careers in this advancing world of technology. The discussion was part of a series supported by the FAS Office of Career Services.

Installation artist Helen Marriage, a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, conversed with Professor Rahul Mehrotra about a modern conundrum: In an increasingly secular age, can public space be spiritual? “Streets of Gold” continues the series on April 5.

Actor Jason Alexander, best known for playing the neurotic George Costanza on the television comedy “Seinfeld,” visited Cabot House for a cozy conversation with 60 students.

Harvard music professor Anne Shreffler and a trio of graduate students have developed an exhibit based on the extensive material related to contemporary music patron Paul Fromm. “Composing the Future: The Fromm Foundation and the Music of Our Time” is on view at the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library through May 2.

A pair of 19th-century photo albums, recataloged after more than 130 years at Harvard, reveals a vanishing world of North American Indians.

Best-selling author and journalist Walter Isaacson will present the 2013 Maurine and Robert Rothschild Lecture, “The Genius of Jobs, Einstein, and Franklin,” on April 8 at the Radcliffe Gymnasium.

Exploring the sweet and dark sides of chocolate, a new course examines the history and food politics of the beloved treat.

What’s in store for the revamped Harvard Art Museums, set to open in fall 2014? On Wednesday evening, curators offered visitors a glimpse of how the museums’ collections will be showcased in the new building, with a nod toward the thoughtful, the innovative, and the interactive.

A Woodberry Poetry Room exhibition features the “Phone-a-Poem” archive, a Cambridge-based service that for 25 years allowed callers to dial in and listen to a famous poet recite his or her work as it was played back on an answering machine.

Visionary architect and developer John C. Portman Jr., inventor of soaring atria in city hotels, stopped by the Harvard’s Graduate School of Design to offer advice and wisdom.

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and other panelists probed the factors that can lead to “cultural citizenship,” including migration trends, exclusionism, and individual openness.

“Congo on the Wire,” a new exhibit at the Carr Center, helps a panel of experts outline the horror and complexity of an African war.

The idea of “The City as Canvas” is to bring art — what one might experience behind the doors of museums and cultural institutions — into public spaces. On Friday, a Loeb Fellow led a conversation on that topic as part of the series “The Power of Cultural Disruption” at the Graduate School of Design.

Why should cities support the arts, and how can they do so sustainably? Experts debated those questions at the public launch of a multiyear initiative of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations that will analyze the role of the arts in strengthening U.S. cities.

Harvard joins with three other universities and five theaters in the National Civil War Project, a multiyear collaboration that will use the arts to re-imagine America’s transformative conflict of 150 years ago.

In the second of three lectures on founding father Thomas Jefferson, historian William J. Moses probed the stark contrasts that the third president showed in his writings and behavior, in his character and his intellect.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Harvard University Press (HUP), and as part of a yearlong celebration Houghton Library is hosting an exhibition of HUP publications, correspondence, and other materials.

As plans for renovating the Harvard Art Museums progress, officials offer a look at what the refurbished facility will hold.

A new exhibit at the Harvard Law School Library explores the portrayal of crime in the American media, a relationship that began in the mid-1800s when a public fascination with true crime emerged.

James Wood, Harvard professor and New Yorker critic, talked to the Gazette about his new book, “The Fun Stuff,” losing himself in music, and a looser approach to fiction.

Filmmakers with Harvard ties are showing, speaking, and mingling at the Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival.

A lecture series on medicine in the Civil War continues at Harvard Medical School with a look at Zabdiel Boylston Adams, a descendant of an iconic American founding family who served heroically as both a doctor and an infantry officer.

Grad students discussed issues of appropriation and collaboration during “Africa Remix: Producing and Presenting African Musics Abroad” at the Barker Center.

Ahead at Harvard is a semester of celebrating Marcel Proust, whose landmark “Swann’s Way” was published in 1913.

Starting in 2014 at the Mahindra Humanities Center, a three-year, interdisciplinary seminar and lecture series, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will investigate the interdependence of violence and nonviolence.