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

The Catoctin Furnace casting shed

Tracing the Enslaved to Modern Descendants

A new technique for connecting ancient DNA to living relatives may have implications for institutions with legacies of slavery.

by Jonathan Shaw

“Joyous Protest Posters”

The Royal Chicano Air Force’s activist art at Houghton Library

by Ryan Doan-Nguyen

A page of medieval script with brightly colored initial letter and drawings in the margins

Words with No Freedom

A Houghton Library exhibit explores writing in prison.

by Rodrigo del Río

The Untold Story of Watercolors

Harvard Art Museums' exhibit highlights unsung facets of American watercolor.

by Nancy Walecki

Harvard Art Museums, view of the galleries and conservation labs that surround the Calderwood Courtyard.

Harvard Art Museums Now Admission-Free

The new policy includes all visitors, effective immediately.  

by John S. Rosenberg

Poster for Dos farkishefte shnayderl (the bewitched little tailor) in Paris, c. 1935

Charades with Chutzpah

Harvard’s Yiddish Theater Collection

by Max J. Krupnick

Watercolor painting of alligators in a swamp

Master Watercolorists

Works by Sargent, Homer, and others at the Worcester Art Museum

by Nell Porter-Brown

Photograph of stone bridge over a pond in a park

Happenings in Hartford

Literary legacies, parks, festivals—and more

by Nell Porter-Brown

Two women seated looking into the film camera, from Japanese film Tokyo Story

Films by a Japanese Master

The Harvard Film Archive’s “Complete Ozu Yasujirō”

by Nell Porter-Brown

Realistic diorama of an old growth forest

The Harvard Forest Dioramas

Scenes of an ever-changing forest, in miniature

by Nancy Walecki