Museums & Collections

Discover treasures from Harvard’s museums and special collections, from ancient artifacts to modern art.

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

Artist Shen Wei in his studio amid his large-scale abstract paintings

“Shen Wei: Painting in Motion”

“Shen Wei: Painting in Motion,” at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

by Nell Porter-Brown

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

Photo of the entrance to the Peabody Museum

Peabody Museum Discovers Possible Slave Remains in Its Collections

“We must begin to confront the reality of a past in which academic curiosity and opportunity overwhelmed humanity,” Harvard president Lawrence Bacow wrote. 

by Marina N. Bolotnikova

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

Philanthropist Edwin Binney with Helen Willard, curator of the Harvard Theatre Collection

Edwin Binney, 3rd

Brief life of a philanthropic art collector: 1925-1986

by Madison U. Sowell

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

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