Museums & Collections

Botanical works from Houghton’s collections displayed in the renovated lobby’s display cases for a summer exhibition

Museums & Collections |

“Edifying and Beautiful”

Botanical illustrations on display at Harvard’s rare book library

by Jack R. Trapanick

A detailed 1598 map of Iceland, with monstrous sea creatures in the surrounding waters and polar bears on ice flows.

Treasure | March-April 2021

Cartography Animated

The era of imaginative mapmaking

by Marina N. Bolotnikova

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

Harvard Squared | March-April 2021

Painterly Dances, Danceable Paintings

“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.

Harvard Squared | March-April 2021

Our Masked Selves

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

by Nell Porter Brown

Photo of the entrance to the Peabody Museum

University News |

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

John Harvard's Journal | January-February 2021

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

Features | January-February 2021

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.

Treasure | January-February 2021

Conservative Curation

“Women in Science” on display

by Alona Bach

Ornate eighteenth-century dress with wide hooped skirt

Harvard Squared | January-February 2021

“Made It: The Women Who Revolutionized Fashion”

Highlighting 250 years of women in fashion

by Nell Porter Brown

Three people in 1950s New York

Harvard Squared | January-February 2021

Picturing America

“Robert Frank: The Americans,” at the Addison Gallery of American Art

by Nell Porter Brown

Arts & Culture |

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