Blog

How do you curate a space that doesn’t exist yet? Full story

In honor of the centenary of Joseph Pulitzer Jr.’s birth on May 13, 1913, we asked Marjorie B. Cohn, author of Classic Modern: The Art Worlds of Joseph Pulitzer Jr., to share a highlight of her findings. Full Story

On April 23, artist Doris Salcedo joined us for the final installment of this season’s ArtisTalk series focusing on “Art in Public Space.” Full story

What do you see when you look at a work of art, and how do you get others to look deeply at objects in a museum? What materials are artworks made from and why were they used? Where do you stand when you are presenting a work of art?

Over this past academic year, Harvard College undergraduates have been exploring such questions in a training program for student guides at the Harvard Art Museums. Full story

Last month, over 300 Harvard College students packed into the Arthur M. Sackler Museum to celebrate graduating seniors, in an event organized by the Harvard Art Museums Undergraduate Connection (HAMUC). Full story

Each spring, Arts First transforms Harvard University’s campus into a massive public arts festival, in which thousands of Harvard students participate in music, film, dance, theater, and visual arts events. Full story

The Sumitomo Foundation in Tokyo recently gave us a second grant toward the restoration of two 15th-century Japanese handscrolls in our collection. Full story

Warmer days and budding blossoms are signaling spring’s arrival and, after months of blizzard after blizzard, we are welcoming it with open arms. Full story

Last month, our chief curator Deborah Martin Kao sat down with with artist Gary Schneider to discuss his portrait work and the recent publication of his book Portrait Sequences 1975 (onestar press, 2012). Full story

Acclaimed storyteller Xanthe Gresham recently visited campus to conduct a storytelling workshop at Harvard’s Arts @ 29 Garden creative space and performed selections from the epic poem the Shahnama (Book of Kings) at the Sackler Museum. Full story

Norma Jean Calderwood, whose collection is showcased in the current exhibition In Harmony: The Norma Jean Calderwood Collection of Islamic Art, often said that in order to fully appreciate Islamic art one must approach it “with quite different eyes.” In a recent gallery talk, visitors were prompted to do just that—to look closely and differently at objects to uncover themes and details that a casual viewer might overlook. Full story

If you plan to head east on the Massachusetts Turnpike today, the Harvard Art Museums will be part your ride. Full story

Thanks to the magic of digital 3D imaging, students in Harvard professor Daniel Lord Smail’s Making the Middle Ages course had a virtual hands-on experience with a pilgrim flask in our collections from the Byzantine period. Full story

Harvard Art Museums conservator Susan Costello recently completed restoration work on Virgin and Child in Majesty (“Seat of Divine Wisdom”), a French wooden sculpture from the 12th century. Full story

Last month, Harvard Art Museums members enjoyed a Harvard Treasures Tour of the Culinary Collection at Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library. Marylène Altieri, Curator of Books and Printed Materials at the library, discussed the origins and breadth of the collection, which focuses on the history of women in America, before taking guests on a guided tour of Siting Julia: A Julia Child Centenary Exhibition. Full story

We can hardly wait for the opening of In Harmony: The Norma Jean Calderwood Collection of Islamic Art. This special exhibition features important objects from the Persian cultural sphere, including ceramics, illustrated manuscripts, and lacquerware.

We went behind the scenes to capture the exhibition as it came together. See the exhibition develop from wood framework to colorful display in this time-lapse video. Full story

We’re pleased to report that our publication Instituting Reform: The Social Museum of Harvard University, 1903–1931 was chosen as one of photo-eye’s Best Books of 2012. Magazine contributors, artists, and curators and publishers of photography select the books on the list. Full story

On December 4, internationally acclaimed German artist Katharina Sieverding treated the public to an illustrated talk chronicling her career from the 1960s to the present. Full story

On November 4, guests filled the Harvard Faculty Club to hear curator and author Marjorie B. Cohn (known to us as Jerry) discuss her recently published biography of Joseph Pulitzer Jr. While Pulitzer is best known as editor and publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, he was also a discerning and passionate collector of art. With access to a wealth of files (“Joe never threw anything away”) and interviews with close acquaintances, she was able to produce a vivid portrait of the collector. Full story

We’d like to congratulate curator Susan Dackerman on receiving the 2012 Book Award from the International Fine Prints Dealers Association (IFPDA) for her publication, Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe. Presented at the IFPDA Print Fair on November 2, the award recognizes excellence in research, scholarship, and the discussion of new ideas in the field of prints. Full story

See the installation of a monumental woodcut by Kerry James Marshall–and gain special appreciation for the hard work of our installers–in this time-lapse video. Full story

It has been said that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but we think the sum of the parts being used in our renovation makes a great story in and of itself. Here’s a look at the project by the scale of its components. Full story

Kathleen Coleman, James Loeb Professor of the Classics, recently took a group of students from her Latin Epigraphy class on a field trip to the picnic table behind the Sackler Museum to take part in a demonstration on how to make a “squeeze.” A squeeze is the process of using layers of wet paper to capture a negative impression of a carved inscription. Unlike a photograph, a squeeze can replicate the depth of carved letters, revealing details that may be difficult to see on a flat surface. Full Story

Mark your calendars: Saturday, September 29, 2012 is Smithsonian magazine’s eighth annual Museum Day Live! Full story

In May 2013, our neighbors at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts will celebrate the big 5-0 for their Le Corbusier-designed building, the one and only in North America. But with a campus buzzing with new and returning students, who wants to wait eight months to get the party started? Cue circa 1963, an exhibition of iconic works from the early to mid-1960s that paint a picture (no pun intended) of the contemporary art scene in the building’s beginning years. Full story

Though officially a day recognizing the contributions and achievements of American workers, most people spend Labor Day celebrating the contributions of summer getaways to our sanity and the achievements of the American grill master. Full story

We recently acquired a rare collection of over 380 printer’s proof photographs through a partial gift from artists Gary Schneider and John Erdman. Schneider and Erdman collected the photographs for over three decades through Schneider/Erdman Inc., a photo printing ad finishing studio they formed in New York in 1981 to finance their lives as artists. Full story

Last Saturday, Jennifer Quick, a PhD candidate in Harvard’s Department of History of Art and Architecture—and former Agnes Mongan Curatorial Intern at the Harvard Art Museums—gave a gallery talk on the silkscreen print Usuyuki (Japanese for “a little snow”) from our current exhibition Jasper Johns / In Press: The Crosshatch Works and the Logic of Print. Full story

London is not the only place where Olympic strength and agility is being flaunted. Yesterday, we were delightfully amused to see our Twitter feed flooding with messages from museums across the country boasting their most competition-ready art and artists for the Museum Olympics. Unfortunately, our athlete couldn’t compete because he wouldn’t get out of bed. We highly recommend searching #MuseumOlympics for endless entertainment. (Yes, the conversation is still going.) Full story

Since we launched our redesigned website back in May 2009, we’ve been collecting data on visitors’ activity, including how many pages you visit, how long you hang around, and what you’re searching for. (Hope this doesn’t creep you out.) We use this giant pool of information to inform decisions about how to make our site better. But it’s not always just business. This information is also fun to look at, not only for practical work applications, but for getting to know our visitors a little better.

So what did we discover? That you like looking at art. Big surprise, right? Our Collection Search tool is by far the most visited section of our site. Here are the top five most viewed objects in our collection. Full story