Museums & Collections

Discover treasures from Harvard’s museums and special collections, from ancient artifacts to modern art.

Smiling woman stands beside a large skull in a display cabinet.

Don’t Call Stephanie Pierce A Paleontologist

From competing in youth gymnastics to studying tetrapods, the Harvard curator has always chased her curiosity.

by Laurel M. Shugart

A drawing of a young boy reading by lamplight.

What of the Humble Pencil?

Review: At the Harvard Art Museums’ new exhibit, drawing takes center stage

by Olivia Farrar

Nineteenth-century prison ruins with brick guardhouse surrounded by forest.

This Connecticut Mine Was Once a Prison

The underground Old New-Gate Prison quickly became “a school for crime.”

by Nell Porter-Brown

Two women in traditional kimonos, one lighting a cigarette, in a scene from Apart from You.

Harvard Film Archive Spotlights Japanese Director Mikio Naruse

A retrospective of the filmmaker’s works, from Floating Clouds to Flowing

by Nell Porter-Brown

Two people moving large abstract painting with blue V-shaped design in museum courtyard.

A Harvard Art Museums Painting Gets a Bath

Water and sunlight help restore a modern American classic.

by Max J. Krupnick

Room filled with furniture made from tightly rolled newspaper sheets.

A Paper House in Massachusetts

The 1920s Rockport cottage reflects resourceful ingenuity.

by Nell Porter-Brown

An illustration of a green leaf being hit by a beam of light and bouncing off the leaf and then becoming a color prisim

Harvard’s Plant Collection Meets Space Science

Light-based analysis of botanical collections link plants to Earth’s changing climate.

by Jonathan Shaw

Magna Carta on display in Houghton Library

A Magna Carta at Harvard Law School

A rare original surfaces at Harvard at an “almost providential” moment. 

by Nina Pasquini

Group of men and women at the Nobel Prize ceremony

Countway Library

Countway Library exhibit explores historic anti-nuclear activism

by Nell Porter-Brown

Two photos of the same woman, one as a store worker the other as an Arctic explorer

Jung Yeondoo: Building Dreams at the Peabody Essex Museum

South Korean artist’s socially themed photographs at the Peabody Essex Museum

by Nell Porter-Brown

Perspective view of a train on tracks lined by trees, surrounded by colorfully dressed onlookers.

Paper Peepshows at Harvard's Baker Library

How “paper peepshows” brought distant realms to life

by Nina Pasquini