Treasure

Two women in traditional Japanese clothing sitting on a wooden platform near a tranquil pond, surrounded by autumn foliage.

Japan As It Never Will Be Again

Harvard’s Stillman collection showcases glimpses of the Meiji era. 

by Lydialyle Gibson

Blanche Calloway spreading her arms during a performance

Blanche Calloway, Cab’s Enterprising Older Sister

The success and struggles of a pioneering musician

by Jacob Sweet

A cartoon of a man speaking on a telephone and workers at desks behind him

The Fighting Pencil

How cartoonists powered the USSR propaganda apparatus

by Nancy Walecki

Newspaper illustration depicts Richard P. Robinson fleeing Helen Jewett's murder scene

True Crime

Helen Jewett and the origin of American murder media

by Nancy Walecki

Borders from family Christmas letters, in Christmas seasonal motifs and colors

Family Newsletters of Holidays Past

Origins of a beloved, bemoaned Yuletide tradition

by Nancy Walecki

A brown grandfather clock

How Harvard Profited On Keeping Time

Harvard’s clocks and the standardization of time

by Jacob Sweet

The front and back of a die-cut trade card shaped like a donkey that was used to advertise coffee. When the card is flipped over, the viewer can see that there is a boy riding on the donkey's back.

Trade Cards, Eye-Catching Heralds of Mass-marketing

A nineteenth-century advertising medium traces the rise of consumer culture.

by Jonathan Shaw

a hat made of jaguar pelt

Dr. Jeffries balloons across the Channel

Two explorers strip to stay aloft.

by Jacob Sweet

A detailed 1598 map of Iceland, with monstrous sea creatures in the surrounding waters and polar bears on ice flows.

How cartographers filled “empty” space with animals

The era of imaginative mapmaking

by Marina N. Bolotnikova

An historic photograph from Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library archives shows the 1936 exhibition on women scientists—in this case, folders of their published scholarship.

Radcliffe’s 1936 exhibit celebrating women in university life

“Women in Science” on display

by Alona Bach

Photograph of Edo era fan depicting Mount Fuji and Mount Tsukuba on alternate sides

An Edo-era dazzler from Harvard Art Museums exhibit

This folding fan enfolds two sacred mountains.

by Lydialyle Gibson