Arts & Culture

Explore Harvard’s vibrant arts scene—from campus exhibitions and theater to cultural analysis and literary reviews. Discover how creativity shapes the Harvard experience.

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 Scourge Remembered

A new film by G. Wayne Miller looks back to a time when tuberculosis gripped America.

by Elizabeth Gudrais

Chapter & Verse

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

A Yodel for Help in the Modern World

Playwright Christopher Durang, a “native American absurdist,” writes black comedies that turn painful events into hilarity.

by Craig Lambert

Fernando Zóbel de Ayala

A brief profile of the peripatetic painter and philanthropist

by John Seed

Pith Paper

On Tetrapanax papyriferum and Chinese art

Laughing at Slavery

In Laughing Fit to Kill: Black Humor in the Fictions of Slavery, Glenda Carpio describes how slavery has provided a background and a source of raw material for African-American humor.

by Craig Lambert

The Alcotts, Père and Fille

John Matteson, who left the law to pursue literature, won a Pulitzer Prize for Eden’s Outcasts, his double biography of Bronson and Louisa May Alcott.

by Julia Wallace

Advice on Art and Life from Yo-Yo Ma

The cello virtuoso speaks to students interested in arts careers, and President Faust announces progress on arts offerings.

Zellweger Gets Her Pudding Pot

Traffic came to a stop in Harvard Square today for a parade with Renée Zellweger, the Hasty Pudding "woman of the year."

A Death in the Harvard Family: John Updike ’54, Litt.D. ’92

Noted author John Updike ’54, Litt.D. ’92, died of lung cancer on January 27 at the age of 76.