Harvard Calendar

SPECIAL. The annual ArtsFirst festival, showcasing more than 200 student performances of music, dance, and drama — most of them free and open to the public — is slated for May 1 to 4 in and around Harvard Yard. For further details and a full performance schedule, call 617-495-8687 or visit www.fas.harvard.edu/~arts/.

FILM. As part of the ArtsFirst festival, the Harvard Film Archive screens several films by Mira Nair ’79, this year’s recipient of the Harvard Arts Medal. Films include her undergraduate debut, Jama Masjid Street Journal, as well as Monsoon Wedding, Salaam Bombay!, and Mississippi Masala. For showtimes and information on the archive’s other spring offerings, call 617-547-8300, or visit www.harvardfilmarchive.org. The filmmaker also converses with John Lithgow ’67 during "An Evening with Mira Nair," at Sanders Theatre on May 3 at 8 p.m. Call 617-496-2222 for further details.

MUSIC. The traditional Band and Glee Club concert takes place on June 4 at 8 p.m. in Tercentenary Theatre. Sanders Theatre hosts a series of concerts this spring, including the Kuumba Singers, who perform on May 9, and the Harvard Group for New Music, which presents the “Boston Modern Orchestra Project” on May 24. Both concerts begin at 8 p.m. On June 1 at 3 p.m., the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum kicks off its international tour with a "Farewell to Cambridge Concert." For tickets, call 617-496-2222, or visit the Harvard box office at www.fas.harvard.edu/~memhall/.

NATURE. The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics hosts free observatory nights, telescopic viewings, and lectures on the third Thursday of every month. Call 617-495-7461 for details.

Victoria Maharani with the Princess Royal, c. 1845, is among the works of art on display in Image and Empire: Picturing India during the Colonial Era, at the Sackler Art Museum through May 25.

©President and Fellows of Harvard College (Harvard University Art Museums)

EXHIBITIONS. Image and Empire: Picturing India during the Colonial Era, featuring landscape paintings, photographs, and ivory artwork from this period, is on display through May 25 at the Sackler Museum. Also at the Sackler is Buddhist Art: The Later Tradition. The show highlights Chinese, Korean, and Japanese art from the eighth through the twentieth centuries, including sacred texts, sculptures, paintings, textiles, and ceramic objects. Ending May 11 at the Fogg is a rare showing of World War I-era lithographs and paintings by George Bellows, including Germans Arrive, that depict the horrors of war. Also at the Fogg is Jean Fautrier 1898-1964, an exhibit of 36 paintings. Among them is Otages (Hostages), a body of work that stemmed from the artist’s experience overhearing a Nazi massacre while in hiding in Paris. Continuing at the Busch-Reisinger is Marcel Breuer: A Special Installation of 1930s Furniture and Kandinsky in 1914. Call 617-495-9400 or visit www.artmuseums.harvard.edu for further information. Opening May 29 at the Peabody Museum is Painted by a Distant Hand: Mimbre Pottery from the American Southwest. Also on display is These Shoes Were Made For…Walking? — an eclectic array of footwear from around the world. For museum hours, call 617-496-1027.

THEATER. The American Repertory Theatre presents William Shakespeare’s Pericles, directed by Andrei Serban, from May 10 through June 28. Opening May 29 is the world premiere of The Sound of a Voice, a musical play by Philip Glass and David Henry Hwang that was inspired by Japanese ghost stories. For tickets and showtimes, call 617-547-8300 or visit www.amrep.org.

Listings also appear in the weekly University Gazette.