"Co-curricular" Creativity One of 34 variations on a picnic table built at Radcliffe Quad by undergraduates and artist Ross Miller: a 1988 Office for the Arts public-art project. Office for the Arts

"You're better off being the world's worst originator than the world's best imitator," observed jazz trumpeter Harry "Sweets" Edison at Harvard in 1990. In a way, Edison's remark summarizes the philosophy of the Office for the Arts at Harvard and Radcliffe, now in a year-long celebration of its twenty-fifth anniversary. Add to this another slant, from then-President Derek Bok. In 1988, when the Office for the Arts asked him to support three temporary public-art installations at Radcliffe Quad, Bok mused: "Let's see...you want me to let a bunch of people who know nothing about this place do weird things at Harvard that will get me in a lot of trouble. But a wide range of students will look at their environment in a provocative way? That's a great idea!"

Since its founding in 1973, the Office for the Arts has been sponsor, supporter, clearinghouse, publicist, and celebrant of the dazzling array of artistic activities that are constantly underway at Harvard and Radcliffe. Furthermore, the office has witnessed and encouraged a deep transformation in the role of artistic creation and performance at the College. "We think differently about artistic work now," says the office's director, Myra Mayman (see Harvard Portrait). "It used to be 'nice things for kids to do in their spare time.' The arts were seen as merely extracurricular programs. But that view was belittling, demeaning. What we're really after here is creative thinking, and integrating it into the undergraduate experience. We've decided that this is more important to the educational process than it seemed to be when I first started. Thinking creatively is extremely important in this country: to be open to new ideas, to respond quickly, to react to crisis, to see negative space and what can be done with it--it's going to be our survival. The arts are really co-curricular activities."

A quarter-century ago, artistic endeavor was a far less visible aspect of Harvard life, and existed in a somewhat centrifugal state. "Students said, 'The arts are everywhere and nowhere--they're hard to find,'" Mayman recalls. In December 1971, only a few months into his presidency, Derek Bok appointed a Committee for the Practice of the Arts, chaired by James Ackerman, now Kingsley professor of fine arts emeritus, to explore what Harvard could do to make artistic creation a more meaningful part of the undergraduate experience. Among other things, the committee recommended creating a central office that would sponsor and coordinate programs, "to function as a nerve center of arts activities." At the same time, Radcliffe wanted to hire someone to run its dance, theater, and visual-arts programs, so Bok and Radcliffe's president, Matina Horner, decided to combine the two purposes in one office. Funding began in September 1973, with Mayman having been chosen from a pool of 90 candidates as the first director. Mirabile dictu, she is still on the job.

Until 1995, the office's offices were in Agassiz House in Radcliffe Yard. Now they occupy a brick edifice at 74 Mount Auburn Street that formerly sheltered Hillel House, and earlier was home to Sanctuary and the Iroquois Club. From this vantage point the office catalyzes a panoply of artistic adventures. Each year it makes about 50 grants to undergraduates--seed money, averaging $300 per grant--to nurture all manner of nascent projects, like producing a little-known opera or publishing a broadside of female humor. There are publications like the monthly Arts Spectrum and the annual Practice and Performance guide that help students connect with art as producers or consumers. The office subsidizes music lessons for undergraduates who have made a serious commitment to an instrument, but cannot afford instruction on top of college expenses. There are ongoing programs like the Radcliffe Ceramics Studio and Radcliffe Dance Program. A website helps students plan events. Each year the office brings a jazz artist-in-residence to Harvard, and less regularly, sponsors visiting artists in public art, like David Ward, creator of the magical installation "Canopy: A Work for Voice and Light in Harvard Yard" (see "Voices in the Trees," Harvard Magazine, July-August 1994, page 78). Each spring since 1993, Arts First weekend has showcased student creations, and for the past four years that festival has climaxed with the presentation of the Harvard Arts Medal. Its previous winners are Jack Lemmon '47, Pete Seeger '40, Bonnie Raitt '72, and John Updike '54; this year's recipient is set designer David Hays '52, founder of the National Theatre of the Deaf.

Another high-profile activity is Learning from Performers, launched in 1975 to bring creative talents to Harvard to participate in open discussions, master classes, and lecture-demonstrations. The parade has included Mstislav Rostropovich, "Count" Basie, Quincy Jones, David Byrne, Beverly Sills, Pierre Boulez, Stephen Sondheim, James Earl Jones, Jessica Lange, Arthur Miller, Laurie Anderson, Mort Sahl, George Cukor, Richard Avedon, and Twyla Tharp; in all, more than 300 artists have shared their knowledge. Most of these occasions are preserved on audio- or videotape; taken together they represent an immense archive of insight into the creative process.

With such resources at hand, the office has begun to explore the possibility of producing a series of television/video programs that investigate creative thinking, based primarily on interactions between visiting artists and undergraduates. The first segment is a conversation between Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, collaborators on Sunday in the Park with Georges, a musical play about creativity whose protagonist is painter Georges Seurat. In the future, the office also plans to "talk more with students about the importance of arts in education, and to connect more with the curriculum," Mayman says. She suggests, for example, that one might study Roman ceramics both in the library and at the pottery wheel, explaining: "The physical activity taps another part of your intellect."

Mayman also cites professor of music Kay Kaufman Shelemay's course on world music, whose students this spring learned to dance the tango as a way of knowing and feeling the Latin rhythms. To come alive and breathe, the arts must be experienced. "You are missing out on something if you read--or write--a play, and never see it performed," Mayman says, citing the credo of George Pierce Baker, Harvard's celebrated teacher of playwriting whose most famous pupil was Eugene O'Neill. For Baker, Radcliffe's Agassiz Theater was the essential pedagogical laboratory; seeing a play in performance was, in Mayman's words, "the final test."

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