Arts & Culture

In her one-woman shows, Tony- and Pulitzer-nominated writer and actress Anna Deavere Smith spins interviews into a theatrical performance. Weaving the words she has collected into an evocative tapestry, she brings to life characters ranging from a photographer in Iraq to a Harvard theologian to a Kentucky Derby jockey to a Rwanda genocide survivor.

Although the name John James Audubon is synonymous with beautifully detailed, scientifically accurate drawings of birds, many of his early drawings were destroyed by Audubon himself, but an intriguing selection remains in the collections of Harvard’s Houghton Library and the Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ).

Kelsey Leonard grew up on New York’s Long Island, bombarded by society’s common images of American Indians that included casino owners, alcoholics, and basket-weaving natives.

Harvard’s Department of Music recently announced a host of fellowship and award recipients. The Oscar S. Schafer Award is given to graduate students “who have demonstrated unusual ability and enthusiasm in their teaching of introductory courses, which are designed to lead students to a growing and lifelong love of music.”

The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology has announced that Dayanita Singh of New Delhi, India, has been awarded the Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.).

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.

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…

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 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).

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.

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.

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.

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.