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.

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

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

Zoom-like grid of colorful portraits of people in pandemic-era face masks.

“This is Not a Gag,” MASS MoCA

Richard Nielsen: “This is Not a Gag,” at MASS MoCA

by Nell Porter-Brown

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

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

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

Claude Monet's painting of clouds, fields, and poplars

Museum of Fine Arts winter exhibits

Winter exhibits at the Museum of Fine Arts

by Nell Porter-Brown

Gifts for the arts

Holiday gifts that support the arts

by Nell Porter-Brown