Creativity and Meaning

Henry Louis Gates Jr. (left), the event’s host and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, shared a moment with medal recipient Steven Spielberg (photo 1). Gov. Deval Patrick garnered laughter during his introduction (photo 2). Sonia Sotomayor (from left), David Stern, and Tony Kushner didn't let the evening's lighter moments pass them by either (photo 3).

At Du Bois awards, the stars aligned

Medal recipients include Sotomayor, Kushner, Spielberg, Lewis, Jarrett, and Stern

Arts|

DateOctober 3, 2013May 21, 2019

“What else do you do when you come to Harvard Yard? Everybody you know has a picture in front of the statue,” said 300th Anniversary University Professor Laurel Ulrich, who is looking closely at the John Harvard Statue in her class “Tangible Things: Harvard Collections in World History.”

Biography of a bronze

John Harvard in detail, 375 years after his death

Campus|

DateOctober 2, 2013March 13, 2019

Vijay Iyer: “When I arrive at Harvard, I look forward to wading in deeper — mentoring student composer-performers, illuminating new currents in American music, and convening conversations with some of the stellar thinkers on campus. And I especially look forward to connecting all of what we do to the world beyond the University, because a life in the arts means a life of service to those around us.”

A professorship and a MacArthur

Jazz authority Vijay Iyer will become professor in Music Department, wins creative grant

News|

DateSeptember 25, 2013

Innovation is an increasingly important part of Harvard. The interactive FloTree at the Harvard Museum of Natural History is a tangible example (photo 1); as is the i-lab, Harvard's entrepreneurial hub (photo 2); and the MetaLAB's student-designed "Labrary," a pop-up space where "innovative scenarios for the future" begin (photo 3).

The watchword is innovation

Harvard Schools point toward future where creativity is king

Science|

DateSeptember 25, 2013July 26, 2019

Interdisciplinary collaboration touches every discipline at Harvard, including work at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning (photo 1); the A.R.T. helping local high school students better understand issues related to the Civil War (photo 2); and Harvard students and professors collecting data during the Maha Kumbh Mela festival in India (photo 3).

Cooperating in educating

Increasingly, Harvard Schools meld resources to improve learning

World|

DateSeptember 23, 2013June 5, 2019

“The Heart of Robin Hood,” produced in cooperation with the Royal Shakespeare Company, will add a fun twist to the familiar tale (photo 1); the spring world premiere of “The Shape She Makes” examines a girl in a dysfunctional family (photo 2); and social justice is explored on a global level in “Witness Uganda" (photo 3).

Social justice at the A.R.T.

Theater’s new season will broadly echo that theme, director Paulus says

Arts|

DateSeptember 20, 2013May 17, 2019

The Du Bois Medal ceremony on Oct. 2 will mark the launch of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. “More important than inaugurating the Hutchins Center, this event honors six extraordinary people who have contributed in historic ways to African-American community and culture,” said Glenn Hutchins (pictured). “Through their work, they embody the purpose of my family's gift: to advance knowledge and understanding, and to improve the society in which we live."

Six luminaries to receive Du Bois Medal

Ceremony to mark launch of Hutchins Center for African and African American Research

News|

DateSeptember 18, 2013May 9, 2019

In a recent talk at the Science Center, Eric Kansa — "a true revolutionary," according to Judson Harward, director of research computing for the arts and humanities at Harvard University Information Technology — pleaded with his audience to "start an open-access journal" dedicated to archaeology.

The modern opens the past

Digital data-mining can greatly benefit archaeological studies, scholar says

Arts|

DateSeptember 17, 2013April 30, 2019

Last year, Ph.D. student Stuart M. McManus (left) discovered a poem by Benjamin Larnell, the last Native American student at Harvard in the colonial era. Larnell’s poem is most interesting for what it signifies, said Tom Keeline, a scholar of Latin pedagogy: “that American Indians were trained in exactly the same way as colonial Puritans.”

Harvard’s Indian College poet

After 300 years, researcher finds Latin ode by last of its students

Arts|

DateSeptember 16, 2013May 21, 2019

"My message is this is going to be a very different kind of art museum," said Harvard Art Museums director Thomas W. Lentz (left), who led a tour with Charles Klee, the principal at the architectural firm Payette, which is collaborating with the Renzo Piano Building Workshop on the renovation and expansion project (photo 1). Among the features in Renzo Piano's design is a glass rooftop, a giant skylight that will diffuse light down through the building’s new central circulation corridor, adjacent galleries, and onto the Calderwood Courtyard (photo 2). The exterior is a combination of both the modern and traditional (photo 3).

Peering into the Fogg

New spaces for Harvard Art Museums reflect fresh ideas

Arts|

DateSeptember 13, 2013May 2, 2019

The similarities between Victoria Basedow (left) of Eden Hills, Australia — the incoming Harvard freshman from the farthest locale — and Cambridge's own Serena Blacklow — the closest — don't begin and end with their last names. The new students are also both rowers.

So near, so far, at Harvard

A look at the Class of 2017, by the numbers

Campus|

DateSeptember 9, 2013

Seamus Heaney, who died Aug. 30, had close ties to Harvard. During the 2012 Commencement, Heaney read a poem he'd written for Harvard (photo 1). In 2000, he attended a portrait unveiling in his honor at Lamont Library (photo 2). In December 1984, the Gazette published the announcement of Heaney being named Harvard's Boylston Professor (photo 3).

Heaney’s death caught ‘the heart off guard’

Noted Irish poet had long and deep ties to Harvard

News|

DateAugust 30, 2013June 19, 2019

Cultural stereotypes around food remain, according to Marilyn Morgan, the professor behind the Harvard Summer School course “Gender, Food and Culture in American History." An early look: "The best toast I ever tasted," 1939 (photo 1); “How to enjoy your 1951 General Electric refrigerator-food freezer combination,” (photo 2); students participating in a cooking class, ca. 1929-34 (photo 3).

Food, gender, culture

Course shows depth, intensity of Summer School offerings

Arts|

DateAugust 29, 2013July 25, 2019

Matt Damon describes how a playwriting course at Harvard changed his life.

Oscar winner Matt Damon on his Harvard years

Arts|

DateAugust 6, 2013February 13, 2018

President Drew Faust greets Team Nucleik, the grand prize winners of the President's Challenge for social entrepreneurship. The team includes Scott Crouch '13 (from left), Matthew Polega '13, and Florian Mayr '13.

Crime-fighting platform wins President’s Challenge

Nucleik, Flume, PlenOptika, and TerraTek share $100,000 to advance social ventures

News|

DateMay 22, 2013June 19, 2019

Radcliffe fellow and classically trained pianist Tsitsi Jaji uses her musical expertise and knowledge of comparative literature to explore how composers of African descent set poetry to music for solo voice and piano. She will perform today at 4 p.m. in the Radcliffe Gymnasium.

Making poetry sing

Radcliffe fellow interprets poetry through song

Arts|

DateMay 1, 2013

Wynton Marsalis returned to Harvard to continue his two-year lecture series. He opened the evening by playing a piece that he had written earlier that day to commemorate the city’s, and the country’s, anguish over the bombings. “Sometimes the expression of grief is such a heavy feeling that only playing will suffice,” said Marsalis.

Jazz as conversation

Marsalis explores instincts, teamwork behind a good performance

Arts|

DateApril 18, 2013

On campus for a five-week residency, Harvard graduate Calla Videt (above) worked with Harvard geneticist Jonathan Beckwith and his students to create a play addressing the complex issues in Beckwith's class “Social Issues in Biology.” Performances will be held April 12-14.

Science under the stage lights

Rare production uses drama to underline social issues involved

Arts|

DateApril 11, 2013July 26, 2019

Humanities in the digital age

Panel discusses emerging ‘Digital Humanities’

Arts|

DateApril 3, 2013March 13, 2019

Art and cost

Future of funding at heart of Hauser Center’s study of six communities

Arts|

DateMarch 4, 2013May 30, 2019

The George Washington University and Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater in Washington, D.C., hosted the kickoff of a national multiyear collaboration between theaters and universities. The Harvard-affiliated American Repertory Theater will take part, and artistic director Diane Paulus praised the “opportunity to explore the American Civil War, and the civil war as it continues in our world today.”

Of art and the Civil War

Harvard joins consortium to re-imagine 150-year-old conflict creatively

Arts|

DateFebruary 28, 2013

This photograph of Sacco’s “little family” — a phrase coined by the public — was a stock image that appeared in many local and international newspapers. It was also used as publicity by loyal supporters of the anarchist, socialist, and labor movements, appearing in broadsides and posters advertising protest meetings and rallies to be held in the U.S. and abroad.

Arresting images

Exhibit shows how crime was portrayed in early media

Arts|

DateFebruary 19, 2013May 15, 2019

26 immortal portals

Class examines art, history, and significance of Harvard Yard’s many gates

Arts|

DateJanuary 31, 2013March 22, 2019

“There’s a real breadth here,” said the exhibition’s curator, Mary McWilliams, who holds the namesake chair as Norma Jean Calderwood Curator of Islamic and Later Indian Art. The collection contributes “a scope and depth that we didn’t have before.”

Pearls of Persian art

Late collector’s Islamic collection spans centuries and genres

Arts|

DateJanuary 29, 2013April 15, 2019

Harvard Graduate School of Design Dean Mohsen Mostafavi sees the newly defined Arthur W. Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship in both grand and practical terms. Along with the $100,000 award, Wheelwright recipients will be invited to lecture at the GSD (pictured).

Widening the Wheelwright

Fellowship eligibility expanded beyond GSD-affiliated architects

Arts|

DateJanuary 28, 2013April 18, 2019

“If we go through our lives thinking that love needs to be a swept-off-your-feet kind of love, like Romeo and Juliet in the first springs of passion, that’s slightly delusional," said Edison Miyawaki, assistant professor of neurology, who wrote "What to Read on Love, Not Sex," a book about love, literature, and Freud.

He wrote the book of love

Literary neurologist examines the tough work that underlies tender relationships

Arts|

DateJanuary 2, 2013September 12, 2019

Carolling at Memorial Church

Arts|

DateDecember 13, 2012February 13, 2018

A musical gift

Memorial Church prepares for annual carol services

Arts|

DateDecember 13, 2012March 15, 2019

Josh Bell is the new Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in the English Department. “I love movies and I tend to have a cinematic conception of the poem anyway,” he says. “A poem is a really great place for a director who’s not inclined to be a director. As a poet you’re producing and giving direction and creating this visual feel and it’s very similar to making movies.”

For whom Josh Bell tolls

New Briggs-Copeland lecturer calls on rocker Vince Neil in latest poems

Arts|

DateOctober 22, 2012July 9, 2019

Bernie Krause (left), author of "The Great Animal Orchestra," and Jonathan Skinner, poet and founding editor of Ecopoetics, perform a call-and-response poetic soundscape. See sidebar for audio examples.

The sounds of nature, as music

Woodberry Poetry Room program pairs forest recordings with verse

Arts|

DateOctober 1, 2012

Page 2 of 4

Medal recipients include Sotomayor, Kushner, Spielberg, Lewis, Jarrett, and Stern

John Harvard in detail, 375 years after his death

Jazz authority Vijay Iyer will become professor in Music Department, wins creative grant

Harvard Schools point toward future where creativity is king

Increasingly, Harvard Schools meld resources to improve learning

Theater’s new season will broadly echo that theme, director Paulus says

Ceremony to mark launch of Hutchins Center for African and African American Research

Digital data-mining can greatly benefit archaeological studies, scholar says

After 300 years, researcher finds Latin ode by last of its students

New spaces for Harvard Art Museums reflect fresh ideas

A look at the Class of 2017, by the numbers

Noted Irish poet had long and deep ties to Harvard

Course shows depth, intensity of Summer School offerings

Nucleik, Flume, PlenOptika, and TerraTek share $100,000 to advance social ventures

Radcliffe fellow interprets poetry through song

Marsalis explores instincts, teamwork behind a good performance

Rare production uses drama to underline social issues involved

Panel discusses emerging ‘Digital Humanities’

Future of funding at heart of Hauser Center’s study of six communities

Harvard joins consortium to re-imagine 150-year-old conflict creatively

Exhibit shows how crime was portrayed in early media

Class examines art, history, and significance of Harvard Yard’s many gates

Late collector’s Islamic collection spans centuries and genres

Fellowship eligibility expanded beyond GSD-affiliated architects

Literary neurologist examines the tough work that underlies tender relationships

Memorial Church prepares for annual carol services

New Briggs-Copeland lecturer calls on rocker Vince Neil in latest poems

Woodberry Poetry Room program pairs forest recordings with verse

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