Arts & Culture

All Arts & Culture

  • Modern opera with an old soul

    Pianist-composer Matt Aucoin ’12 is now co-artistic director of the American Modern Opera Company, set for Harvard performances Dec. 15-18.

  • Bringing out the edge in Austen’s wit

    Playwright Kate Hamill’s adaptation of “Sense & Sensibility,” at the A.R.T. through Jan. 14, accentuates Jane Austen’s gift for comedy.

    The cast of "Sense & Sensibility" rehearses.
  • The need to talk about race

    Lawyer and social activist Bryan Stevenson delivered the Tanner Lecture on Human Values, announcing the opening of a memorial to victims of lynching and a museum on the legacy of slavery next April.

  • Art and technology explored during region-wide collaboration

    This winter, a dozen cultural organizations throughout Greater Boston — including three from Harvard — are partnering to present an ambitious, region-wide exploration of art and technology.

  • Storytelling as a global force

    English Professor Martin Puchner talks to the Gazette about his new book “The Written World,” about how literature shaped civilization.

  • Take a seat … and the city’s pulse

    A Harvard professor’s sculpture translates real-time data into soundscapes.

  • Harvard acquires new work by Kara Walker

    “Powerhouse of a work” by top contemporary artist Kara Walker is the largest piece in the collection of the Harvard Art Museums.

  • Not easily persuasive

    Visiting professor and Washington Post political columnist E.J. Dionne on how he started as a journalist, self-editing, and the art of persuasion.

    E.J. Dionne in his office.
  • Scholar’s eye for fashion

    Harvard senior Lily Calcagnini’s history and literature concentration places fashion front and center in cultural theory.

  • A more collaborative Carpenter Center

    Dan Byers wants to build community around contemporary art as new director of the Carpenter Center.

  • We speak, therefore we are

    Divinity School alum and indigenous Maskoke person Marcus Briggs-Cloud discusses his efforts to maintain his ancestral language and identity in the next installment of the Gazette’s podcast “Heard at Harvard.”

  • The world according to Conrad

    Professor Maya Jasanoff talks about her new book, “The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World.”

  • Preserving a culture, one speaker at a time

    Since 1996, the Yuchi Language Project has been fighting to preserve the language of the Yuchi people.

  • Turn on, tune in, geek out

    Houghton Library displays highlights from the 50,000 pieces inherited from a billionaire collector who was obsessed with the search for transcendence through sex, drugs, and rock ’n ’roll.

    Jensen Davis has tapped into Harvard’s Ludlow-Santo Domingo collection for her research on psychedelic drugs. Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer
  • How a curator sees $450M Leonardo

    Insight from Cassandra Albinson of Harvard Art Museums on the $450.3 million sale of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi.”

  • Michael Ondaatje goes deep into character

    Michael Ondaatje, author of “The English Patient” and other novels, read passages from his work and took questions on his creative process during a Harvard forum.

  • Parsing the poet, Bob Dylan

    A Harvard professor’s new book probes the influence of the great ancient poets, such as Homer and Virgil, on Bob Dylan and his music.

  • More Dutch treasures for Harvard

    Harvard Art Museums has announced a major gift of Dutch Golden Age drawings from the Maida and George Abrams collection.

  • The incomparable da Vinci

    Author and Harvard alumnus Walter Isaacson takes on the ultimate Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci.

  • Stephanie Burt opens up

    The Harvard poet discusses new book of poetry, life as a trans woman, and settling in as as co-poetry editor of The Nation.

  • Pain, joy, and wisdom

    Four Harvard professors engage students in a weekly dialogue that looks at wisdom as it relates to how we experience the world, and the strategies we need to have a moral life amid uncertainty. 

  • Ideas (and sneakers) were in the air

    Designer Virgil Abloh’s Harvard lecture mirrored his multiplatform career: bold, dynamic, and audacious.

  • Music and meaning, the Marsalis way

    Wynton Marsalis was back at Harvard on Monday night to celebrate the release of the video version of his first lecture performance at Harvard from 2011, “Music as Metaphor,” and to discuss the importance of the arts.

  • Feejee Mermaid is unattractive attraction

    Feejee Mermaid offers haunting image at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

    The Feejee Mermaid has haunted the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology for more than 100 years. Video still by Kai-Jae Wang/Harvard Staff
  • Depths of slavery, heard, seen, and felt

    The poetry of Phillis Wheatley adds power to a film by Harvard scholars that re-creates an 18th-century campus debate on slavery.

    Harvard sophomore Ashley LaLonde portrays poet Phillis Wheatley in the film "No More, America," directed by Peter Galison and Henry Louis Gates Jr.
  • Honoring Mexican discovery

    A Harvard delegation traveled to Mexico to take part in the inaugural talk of the Eduardo Matos Moctezuma Lecture Series.

    Eduardo Matos Moctezuma discusses discoveries at Templo Mayor in a lecture the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.
  • The queen of Halloween

    Harvard Music Department administrator Lesley Bannatyne’s other life is as a Halloween expert. She has written five books on the topic, including a children’s work.

  • Festive start to Worldwide Week

    The Harvard Graduate Council kicked off Worldwide Week with the inaugural International Festival, featuring music and dance by multicultural student groups.

  • Eden as a storyteller’s paradise

    A conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar Stephen Greenblatt on his new book, “The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve.”

    Stephen Greenblatt and Dean Robin Kelsey chat about Greenblatt's new book "The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve" in the lobby of Harvard Global Support Services.
  • Life stories keep him turning (and sniffing) the page

    A profile of Luke Kelly ’19, a history concentrator whose work at Houghton Library has nurtured his award-winning passion for books.