Tag: Visual Arts

  • Nation & World

    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…

    11 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Filmmaker literally deconstructs classic, avant-garde movies

    For filmmakers, the visual image is vital. But movie producer Rebecca Baron is more interested in what you can’t see.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Martorell conducts his own sort of life class at Fogg

    Shortly after unpacking his bags and setting up his easel, Antonio Martorell is ruminating on the philosophy of art. “The materials, as such, are as important as subject matter. They become subject matter themselves — they are matter and they matter.”

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Embracing our own being’

    Controversial pop artist Jeff Koons brought his unique perspective to the Carpenter Center Thursday night (April 3), speaking about his work and philosophy to an invited audience of just over 200.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Exhibition shows a lot of soul

    Ever wonder what a soul looks like? You have 30 chances to see a picture of one at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Gutman Library through Feb. 15. Hundreds more chances if you look at the related book, “Soul” (Reg Vardy Gallery/Satellite Arts, 2007), or if you go to the Web site http://www.drawyoursoul.org.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Chute on graphic narratives — they’re not just comic books anymore

    The title of Hillary Chute’s Nov. 29 lecture, “Out of the Gutter: Contemporary Graphic Novels by Women,” has a double meaning. It refers to the elevation of graphic narratives — comics — from the lowest, most disreputable level of artistic expression to a form worthy of New York Times best-sellerdom, literary prizes, and academic attention.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Washington Allston, a name to remember

    When you graduate from a University that counts dozens of U.S. presidents and Supreme Court justices — and hundreds of distinguished scholars, scientists, and Nobel Prize winners — among its alumni, it is easy, even for the most accomplished and talented, to slip through the cracks into obscurity. One such alumnus whose reputation has fallen…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Portrait of Amos unveiled

    A portrait of Harold Amos, who taught at Harvard for nearly half a century, was unveiled by the Harvard Foundation on Oct.4 at the Courtyard Café in the Warren Alpert Building at Harvard Medical School. Amos was a member of both the Medical School Faculty and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He was the…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Scholars give us antiquity — the colorized version

    For artists of the Renaissance, the key to truth and beauty lay in the past. Renaissance artists assiduously studied the sculptures and monuments of Greece and Rome and emulated them in their own work. The inspiration they found in those ancient models has echoed down the centuries, influencing the appearance of Western art and architecture…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Former staff, prestigious artist Crite dies at 97

    Allan Rohan Crite, a renowned painter and Harvard Extension School alumnus, passed away on Sept. 6. He was 97.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art announces landmark gift

    The Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art (CTSMA), a leading research center of the Harvard University Art Museums, has announced a major gift of Barnett Newman’s studio materials and related ephemera through the generosity of The Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Peter and Anne Brooke give collection to HUAM

    Peter A.B. ’52, M.B.A. ’54 and Anne Brooke of Boston have announced plans to bequeath their collection of 17th century Dutch and Flemish paintings to the Harvard University Art Museums (HUAM).

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    New exhibit at Houghton Library features decorated papers

    In the 1930s when Boston bookbinder and society matron Rosamond B. Loring (1889–1950) was unable to find ornamental papers she considered good enough to serve as end leaves for her books, she took matters into her own hands, teaching herself to make what are known in bookbinding as “decorated papers.” Her initiative, especially with paste…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Through a child’s eye

    At first glimpse, the photos don’t seem particularly revealing: a fish on a plate, a television, clean dishes on a rack, a toddler with outstretched arms, a lighted porch. But to Wendy Luttrell, these pictures — and 1,600 others like them in her data base at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) — open…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The ‘Last Ruskinians’: Detail, detail, detail

    Many of the paintings and drawings in the Fogg Museum’s new exhibition “The Last Ruskinians: Charles Eliot Norton, Charles Herbert Moore, and Their Circle” are astounding for their jewel-like detail and trompe l’oeil realism, but to regard them as a higher sort of eye candy would be to miss the point.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Is democracy merry?

    An enlarged news photo, flaunting its rough pattern of halftone dots, shows a man in jeans, a military overcoat, and a fedora striding toward the camera. Judging by his wide grin he seems to be enjoying himself hugely, but his downcast eyes convey that it is a private enjoyment, not shared by the uniformed police…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Exhibit unveils forgotten photos

    An early 20th century visitor to Harvard – especially if he or she were a forward-thinking person who believed that science was the best approach to solving society’s problems – would probably be eager to climb to the top floor of Emerson Hall to see the newly installed Social Museum. The museum was the brainchild…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Neighbors Gallery review under way

    The Harvard Neighbors Gallery is now accepting portfolio submissions from eligible Harvard-affiliated artists (including current or retired full- or part-time faculty and staff and their spouses/partners). Artists will be selected to show their work during monthlong exhibitions (solo or group shows) between September 2007 and May 2008.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    New York artist expresses long passion for polar exploration

    They are odds and ends of lives long past, lived in the cold and ice of the world’s polar regions. They are bits and pieces that give a feeling as much as they tell a story: an old photograph here, a line drawing there, a braided ribbon, a newspaper headline. The collages lining the walls…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Portraits of dissent on view at Davis Center

    Norton Dodge is an economist, a Harvard alumnus, and a savior of smuggled Soviet art. Smuggler is not usually a moniker that one would choose, but for Norton Dodge it is a badge of honor. Concerned with the plight of artists living under Soviet rule, many of whom found their work prohibited by the regime,…

    4 minutes