Visual Arts

Explore exhibitions, artists, and visual works that enrich Harvard’s cultural and academic life.

Two bare-knuckle boxers fight in a ring, surrounded by onlookers in 19th-century attire.

England’s First Sports Megastar

A collection of illustrations capture a boxer’s triumphant moment. 

by Nell Porter-Brown

Anthony Amore at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, with empty frames that held venerable paintings before the 1990 theft

Art Security Expert Anthony Amore on the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist

A new book shatters myths about art theft.

by David Menconi

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's stolen paintings: images and facts

A slide show with facts about the works stolen from the Gardner museum in 1990.

Yechon, Republic of Korea, 1960s. David R. McCann says, “I remember the expressions of the kids in Korea were always full of life. One interesting thing about these kids I noticed was the way they naturally split up according to gender.”

Harvard faculty photographs from Korea on display in new exhibit

A faculty photography exhibit will be on display through March 15.

Roadside Stand, vicinity of Birmingham, Alabama, 1936

Walker Evans photographs on display at Mather House

Prints from the twentieth-century photographer will be shown through the spring.

The red fist from “The 1969 Protest T-shirt” dispatch, originally designed by Harvey Hacker ’63, filled a “graphic gap” for students protesting the “Bust,” a violent eviction of occupying students from University Hall by police officers and state troopers on April 10, 1969.

Graduate School of Design exhibition celebrates 75 years of rich history

A Graduate School of Design exhibition celebrates 75 years of rich history.

A scene from Meredith James’s video <i>Day Shift </i>, starring James herself

Meredith James '04 creates videos and sculptures that challenge perceptions

Meredith James '04 creates surrealist videos and sculptures that challenge perceptions.

by Jesse Kornbluth

The <i>Invention of Book Printing</i> comes from <i>Nova Reperta</i> (New inventions and discoveries of modern times), by Stradanus (Jan van der Straet), the first such illustrated compendium of postclassical innovations (ca. 1599- 1603). The ability to print many copies of such works revolutionized communication of ideas in the sixteenth century.

Sackler exhibition reveals artistic discovery in Renaissance Europe

An exhibition at the Sackler reveals the connections among Renaissance art, invention, and the evolution of science.

by Jennifer Carling , Jonathan Shaw

Georg Brentel the Younger, from <i>Pamphlet describing the construction and function of a conical sundial,</i> Lauingen: Jacob Winter, 1615. Pamphlet with engravings and woodcuts.

Photographs of early modern printed-paper sundials

Photographs of early modern printed-paper sundials

Jan Sadeler I, after Maarten de Vos,<i> Rhetoric,</i> from the series <i>The Seven Liberal Arts,</i> after 1575. Engraving

Jan Sadeler’s engravings of The Seven Liberal Arts

Jan Sadeler’s engravings of The Seven Liberal Arts

Theodore Galle, after Stradanus (Jan van der Straet), <i>Discovery of America,</i> from <i>Nova reperta</i> (New inventions and discoveries of modern times), c. 1599–1603. Engraving

Inventions in Early Modern Europe

Images from Stradanus’s "Nova reperta," a series of engravings representing technological innovations of the modern age from the perspective of a practicing artist