Arts & Culture

Keisha N. Blain, historian and fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University, discusses working on her newest book, a compilation of essays, short stories, and poems by 90 Black historians, authors, academics, journalists, and activists that traces the history of African America from 1619 to 2019.

Author and activist Julia Wright, filmmaker Malcolm Wright, and author and Radcliffe Fellow Kiese Laymon discuss the uncut version of Richard Wright’s novel “The Man Who Lived Underground” during a talk supported in part by Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research.

The 11-day Arts First festival kicks off April 19, with programming featuring some of Harvard’s best visual arts, music, dance, and performance.

Hasty Pudding Theatricals announces Viola Davis as 2021 Woman of the Year.

In her poem “The Story of Venus,” Suzannah Omonuk imagines what life may have been like for the young enslaved woman living on campus in the 18th century.

Gregg Hecimovich, a Furman University English professor, is working to recover the stories of the Zealy daguerreotypes, which depict enslaved Africans in 19th-century America.

American Repertory Theater’s executive producer Diane Borger to step down in June, returning to London where she spent the first 30 years of her career.

The A.R.T. presents Company One’s production, “Hype Man: a break beat play,” which follows three hip-hop artists as they wrestle with these questions from their rehearsal space to the stage and the streets and back again, against a backdrop of racist violence and inequality. It streams at select times through May 6.

At Radcliffe, Navy veteran Mackin is at work on his next series, “Animals,” featuring a selection of stories left out of his first collection, many inspired by the animals he came across while on duty with a SEAL team in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Black photographers highlight the past and present of the city of St. Louis.

With a shared love of magic, two students founded the Society of Harvard-Undergraduate Magicians, known by its clever acronym, SHAM.

Taraji P. Henson was feted as the 2021 Harvard Foundation’s Artist of the Year.

A panel of experts explored the various ways in which the history of food in art tells a story of creativity and craftsmanship during a recent virtual talk sponsored by the Harvard Art Museums and presented in partnership with the Food Literacy Project at Harvard University Dining Services.

In 1865, Harvard Professor Louis Agassiz traveled to Brazil to create a photographic catalog of people of different races as anatomic evidence in support of his beliefs. Scholars, artists, and curators from Brazil and the U.S. will reflect on these lesser-known images during a panel discussion called “Race, Representation, and Agassiz’s Brazilian Fantasy” hosted by the Peabody Museum.

William Tsutsui, who teaches a course that explores the rich history of Japanese monsters, says which one will win the new “Godzilla vs. Kong” is anybody’s guess.

During a Harvard panel, experts discuss how displays and artifacts reflect choices about whose story is told, and how and why.

Harvard art expert Mary Schneider Enriquez reflects on the sale of a digital collage of 5,000 images by the artist known as Beeple. The digital work fetched an eye-popping $69 million in auction last week as a non-fungible token, a type of digital file that uses computer networks to prove a digital item’s authenticity, and is paid for in cryptocurrency.

Theater, Dance & Media students join Junot Díaz and other writers in an audio version of Radcliffe’s fall magazine.

The George Edward Woodberry Poetry Room will celebrate its 90th anniversary by making some of its first recordings — of the poet T.S. Eliot reading his own work — available to the general public on March 19.

Through the efforts of Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Houghton Library has acquired a first edition of the first novel published by an African American in the U.S.

Harvard alum discusses his Grammy-nominated song “Stand Up” from the biopic “Harriet.”

A small band of magicians present “The Conjurors’ Club” with the American Repertory Theater through April 4.

A number of Harvard faculty and experts took part in a discussion last week about how curators and faculty confront the challenges of teaching with and displaying legacy collections of photographs containing difficult subject matter.

Avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson brings her unique style to the Norton Lectures in a series of virtual presentations.

The Brattle Theatre will continue its tradition of airing “Casablanca,” offering the iconic 1942 movie through a virtual screening over the long weekend.

As the recipient of this year’s Charles Eliot Norton Professorship in Poetry Laurie Anderson tells us how she is designing her six Norton Lectures for a virtual audience.

Harvard Opportunes win UpStaged National Collegiate Performing Arts A Cappella Championship.

Digital Sanctuaries Harvard is an app that invites the public on a virtual walk around and beyond Harvard’s campus through an ever-changing musical score.

Two online art exhibits from the Arnold Arboretum offer a seasonal view of the 281-acre preserve.

Glee clubs from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton mesh online in song to celebrate diversity and fellowship.