Arts & Culture

Actor John Lithgow ’67 hosted the annual Harvard Arts Medal ceremony, which recognizes a Harvard or Radcliffe graduate or faculty member who has achieved excellence in the arts and has made a contribution through the arts to education or the public good. The medal recipient was actor Tommy Lee Jones ’69.

Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, professor emerita of history and American studies at Smith College, examined the shifting gender landscape at Harvard during a talk at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Artist David Michalek, creator of “Slow Dancing,” a temporary installation on the façade of Widener Library, discussed the evolution of his work during a talk at Boylston Hall.

In his new book, “Revolt: An Archaeological History of Pueblo Resistance and Revitalization in 17th Century New Mexico,” Assistant Professor of Anthropology Matthew Liebmann offers a first-of-its-kind look at how the Pueblo people lived during their brief independence from Spain.

Harvard Professor of Music Richard Wolf fell in love with the vina, a South Indian lute, while in college. Now he uses his passion for the vina and other non-Western instruments to help others learn how to play and understand music from other cultures.

Among these recent titles by Harvard writers, there’s something for everyone.

Harvard’s Arts First festival is celebrating its 20th year with poetry, performance, and a stunning public art display.

Something about Harvard, one of the world’s most rigorous universities also helps poets to blossom. It has a lyric legacy that spans hundreds of years and helped to shape the world’s literary canon.

On the centennial of the ship’s sinking, Harvard historian Steven Biel has a new edition of his book, which traces the cultural arc of that myth-making disaster.

Fact-fussy readers help author to remember that a novel’s “air of reality” is among its supreme virtues.

Author Tayari Jones, a Radcliffe fellow, is at work on her fourth novel, set in the American South. “Dear History” explores how a family comes to terms with a wrongful conviction.

The archivist of the United States joins an interdisciplinary conversation at Harvard about the whys and hows of integrating libraries, archives, and museums.

Two Harvard experts moderate a gallery talk about Winslow Homer’s beginnings as a Civil War artist.

The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Room houses about 3,300 volumes from the book collection of its namesake, a 1907 Harvard graduate who died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic…

A C.B. Fisk organ, Opus 139, was unveiled Easter Sunday in Harvard’s Memorial Church.

The ship disaster a century ago led to the drowning of three men affiliated with Harvard. It also prompted a memorial gift that quickly led to construction of the University’s flagship book repository.

Child psychiatrist Nancy Rappaport follows up her 2009 memoir that explored her mother’s suicide with a user-friendly guide for teachers dealing with behaviorally challenged students.

After years of planning, an effort once spearheaded by the late Rev. Peter J. Gomes to install a new organ in the Memorial Church will fill its halls with music.

Street artist eL Seed stopped by Harvard to create a “calligraffiti” painting.

Tunisian artist eL Seed took his spray paints out into the cold last week to create an example of “calligraffiti” in the Science Center’s plaza.

Indian-born director Deepa Mehta often shines light on her homeland with films that explore complex and controversial themes. She discussed her creative and collaborative process during a talk at the Radcliffe Gymnasium.

A cinema legend’s advice on making films about unspeakable war crimes: “Go to see the killers.”

The beauty of art, says William Kentridge in his Norton Lectures, is that it makes “a safe place for uncertainty.”

Harvard alumni started discussions about a memorial in May 1865, as the Civil War ended. By December they had chosen a design. Memorial Hall was to be an ornate Gothic Revival structure, with 5,000 square feet of stained glass, a 210-foot tower, intricate slate roofing, and gargoyles sheathed with copper.

New book documents a rising movement of likable people with offbeat ideas, who constitute a major influence on the Republican Party in this presidential election.

Violinist Adrian Anantawan was born without a right hand, but has become a renowned professional violinist. He now is enrolled in the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Arts in Education Program, with the goal of helping other disabled students in their artistic and creative development.

Before the Civil War, Harvard was a microcosm of the complex loyalties and opinions that marked the United States. During the war, it lost more than 200 of its sons.

Adrian Anantawan was born without a right hand, but with an adaptive device became a renowned professional violinist.

The musician Prince’s painful past as a child of divorce is the key to understanding what makes him tick — and what makes him an icon to Generation X, according to Touré, the cultural critic and author. Touré is presenting the Alain LeRoy Locke Lecture Series.

Scientists tell us blue light will reset body rhythms for sounder sleep and higher alertness. Blue is sky and water; eyes and stones; slumber and spring — with summer right behind.