Arts & Culture

All Arts & Culture

  • Bhabha, matchmaker of disciplines

    Homi K. Bhabha is a marriage counselor of sorts — a literary scholar with a wide range of intellectual appetites whose role is to bring together a diversity of scholars.

  • The Russian bells: A multifaceted love story

    The saga of the Lowell House bells, scheduled to return to Russia this summer after 78 years at Harvard, was the subject of a festival and symposium Sunday and Monday (June 1-2) at Lowell House and the Barker Center.

  • Maggie Spivey: Archaeologist, comedian, princess

    Walk past Maggie Spivey in the Yard or on the streets of Cambridge, and you might find her with head down, eyes glued to the ground. She’s not being anti-social, or lamenting a flubbed grade — this dynamic archaeology concentrator just knows that often the most fascinating stories can be found underfoot.

  • Beatrice Viramontes is a maestro of gigs and digs

    Despite her roots in the primarily Mexican-American East L.A. and a father who played traditional Mexican music on his guitar, Beatrice Viramontes says it “stressed her out” when her father performed at family parties and asked her to sing.

  • Changing lives with music and science

    When Bong-Ihn Koh’s mother brought home a cello piece by mistake, the young Koh got his hands on it and was hooked.

  • The magic of J.K. Rowling

    J.K. Rowling inspires the Class of 2008 with a heartfelt, fluent talk about the uses of failure and imagination.

  • Student work graces Mass Hall

    Bringing home (literally) Harvard’s newly invigorated commitment to the arts, President Drew Faust has opened up Massachusetts Hall to an exhibition of selected artwork by talented undergraduates.

  • Acclaimed architect Renzo Piano to design major Fogg renovation

    There are many reasons to love the Harvard Art Museum. For one, an extensive collection of art transports you from ancient times into the present. Then there is the signature design of the Fogg Museum building at 32 Quincy St., with its evocative courtyard, modeled after the 16th century facade of a home in Montepulciano, Italy.

  • Europe travels to Safavid Iran at Houghton

    Houghton Library’s newest exhibition — “From Rhubarb to Rubies: European Travels to Safavid Iran (1550-1700)” — explores European travel to Safavid Iran in the years 1550 to 1700, a time marked by significant cultural and scientific exchange between the two regions.

  • Diane Paulus appointed artistic director of the American Repertory Theatre

    Harvard University and the American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.) announced today (May 16) the appointment of Diane Paulus as artistic director. She will be the third artistic leader of the A.R.T., following founding director Robert Brustein (1980–2002) and Robert Woodruff (2002–07).

  • Photographs reveal tiny leaf details

    The sense of loss Amanda Means felt is exposed in a new exhibit of her unusual photographs of leaves at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Called “Looking at Leaves,” the exhibit is the third in a series of photographic exhibitions at the museum that explore the intersection of art and science by inviting visitors to look closely at the world around them.

  • Yearlong search for the ‘human’ concludes with Bhabha address

    The series “Rethinking the Human,” a yearlong exploration of the very nature of what it means to be human, sponsored by the Harvard Divinity School’s Center for the Study of World Religions, concluded last week (May 12-13) with a two-day symposium.

  • Bhabha named senior adviser

    Homi K. Bhabha has just been named senior adviser on the humanities to the president and provost. The position, a first for the University, takes effect July 1.

  • Reminiscences of Maxim Gorky

    In 1895, Russian journalist Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, a onetime shoemaker’s apprentice who had quit school at 10, adopted a new name: Maxim Gorky. After that, literary fame came fast and furious for this self-taught, fresh-voiced grandson of a Volga boatman. Gorky — the name means “bitter” — could tell a story, remember everything he read or heard, and had the energy of 10 men.

  • The fleeting nature of performance

    Christine Whitney Dakin, a New York City contemporary dancer and protégé of Martha Graham, is a Radcliffe Fellow this year — the first dancer ever in the program. She’s busy writing a book, making a film, and preparing a Harvard class for next spring.

  • Radcliffe Fellow, poet Elizabeth Alexander reads

    It was show and tell for poet Elizabeth Alexander this week. The Yale University professor of African American studies, a Radcliffe Fellow this year, used a May 5 reading to show the depth and musicality of her poems, short stories, and penetrating essays — and to tell the story of inspiration’s multiple avenues.

  • Ghostly Shakespearean fragment comes to life on stage

    Monday evening (May 5) at Zero Arrow Theatre, an audience of 120 listened in on a discussion of “Cardenio,” a play premiering Saturday (May 10) at the American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.).

  • Rain doesn’t dampen spirit of Arts First

    It was a rainy (not to say explosive) weekend, yet despite the daunting weather, the arts not only endured but prevailed at the University as dance, song, theater, and conceptual art brightened up the Yard and its environs.

  • Distinguished poet visits alma mater

    Adrienne Rich, one of America’s most lauded poets and a major literary voice of the 20th century, returned to the place where it all began on a recent dreary Monday…

  • OfA awards students for excellence in the arts

    The Office for the Arts at Harvard (OfA) and the Council on the Arts at Harvard, a standing committee of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, recently announced the winners of the annual undergraduate arts prizes presented in recognition of outstanding accomplishment in the arts for the 2007-08 academic year.

  • ‘Instability and Decomposition’

    Instability is the reign of things erratic and unpredictable. Decomposition is the state of being as it unravels, nicely captured by a common sentiment: Things fall apart. The two words — and the frictive, unstable worlds they imply — were at the heart of a convocation of young scholars last week (April 25-26).

  • Lucky shot? Photography and chance

    Chance smiled on Joe Rosenthal in late February 1945. The young Associated Press photographer was atop Mount Suribachi to cover the Allied troops’ capture of Iwo Jima when he heard that soldiers were preparing to raise an American flag. It was the second attempt of the day, for authorities had decided the first flag — placed a few hours earlier — was too small.

  • New name conveys museum’s mission

    The Harvard University Art Museums — a leading center for research and teaching in the visual arts comprising three museums and four research centers — has changed its name to the Harvard Art Museum.

  • From breaking to Brahms: Everything under the sun to shine at Arts First

    For the 16th year in a row, Arts First will color the Harvard campus next weekend (May 1-4) with more than 200 music, theater, dance, film, and visual arts events and performances.

  • Fourteen awarded fellowships to further artistic development

    The Office for the Arts (OfA) at Harvard and the Office of Career Services (OCS) recently announced the 2007-08 recipients of the Artist Development Fellowship.

  • Ghent Altarpiece is window into history of art

    To Hugo van der Velden, professor of history of art and architecture in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Ghent Altarpiece is more than a landmark — it’s also an excellent teaching tool. The painting is the focus of Van der Velden’s History of Art and Architecture course, “Jan van Eyck and the Rise of Painting.”

  • Houghton exhibit features Islamic sciences

    If scholarship is the only reliable means of time travel, the Houghton Library offers up Harvard’s latest time machine: “Windows into Early Science,” an exhibit of scientific manuscripts, maps, and illustrated books on display through May 23.

  • Revitalizing Shanghai’s waterfront is challenging task

    Alex Krieger, who teaches the GSD Urban Design Proseminar as well as design studios such as last spring’s “Reconnecting City & River: Vienna, Austria & the Danube,” also leads a class in the College’s Core curriculum on the design of the American city.

  • The complex legacy of slavery in Brazil

    On Thursday (April 17), Lilia Moritz Schwarcz joined Zephyr Frank, assistant professor of Latin American history at Stanford University, for a lunchtime conversation about race in Brazil in both the era of the slave trade and today. The event, titled “Slavery, Abolition and Race in Brazil,” was part of an ongoing series in the Brazil Studies Program of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

  • The literary roots of human rights

    The aim was determining the truth and the technique was torture. Pain was administered in secret, under strict guidelines, often with a judge and doctor present. Once a suspect confessed, the confession would have to be repeated in court.