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.

Gold Nobel Prize medal featuring a profile of Alfred Nobel.

Harvard Alum Wins Economics Nobel Prize

Philippe Aghion helped show how “creative destruction” drives growth.

by Lydialyle Gibson

A photograph of art historian Cassandra Albinson next to a photograph of a portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour applying pink rouge to her cheeks

Harvard Portrait: Cassandra Albinson

A curator takes a fresh look at portraits of aristocratic European women.

by Jonathan Shaw

Producer Jeff Schaffer sits between star Larry David (left) and another cast member on the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” set.

TV writer and producer Jeff Schaffer talks shop

TV writer and producer Jeff Schaffer on how to be funny

by Stuart Miller

Ornate eighteenth-century dress with wide hooped skirt

Peabody Essex Museum fashion exhibit

Highlighting 250 years of women in fashion

by Nell Porter-Brown

Three people in 1950s New York

Robert Frank at the Addison Gallery, Andover, Massachusetts

“Robert Frank: The Americans,” at the Addison Gallery of American Art

by Nell Porter-Brown

Up Close (Virtually) with the Forbes Pigment Collection

Harvard’s world-famous collection of colors can now be enjoyed from home. 

by Marina N. Bolotnikova

Photograph of the cover of To Make Their Own Way in the World: The Enduring Legacy of the Zealy Daguerreotypes

See Their Faces

Confronting “some of the most challenging images in the history of photography”

by Marina N. Bolotnikova

Majestic twentieth-century stone castle perched on Gloucester coastline

Hammond Castle Museum

Gothic surroundings, spiritualism, and science: Hammond Castle Museum’s eclectic appeal

by Nell Porter-Brown

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

Dan Chiasson at home in front of a “sometimes delightful, sometimes disturbing” mural by David Teng Olsen, which appears in The Math Campers.

Dan Chiasson's Poetry and Criticism

Poet-critic Dan Chiasson and The Math Campers

by Lydialyle Gibson

Black-and-white photograph of Karl Puchner in 1937 with his wife, young son, and a tiny, barely visible swastika button on his jacket

Review of Martin Puchner’s “The Language of Thieves”

A German American scholar is unsettled by an ancestor’s secret.

by Marina N. Bolotnikova