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World’s Fairs
World’s Fairs were created to showcase cultural, scientific and technical achievements and to highlight future ambitions of nations around the world. Read more.
Japanese Genre Painting
In the Japanese context, as with most other fields, genre painting refers to the painting of everyday life. Read more.
Rebecca Horn: “Work in Progress”
Rebecca Horn (German, b. 1944) is an internationally recognized contemporary artist, best known for her multimedia approach to art making. Read more.
Mark Rothko's Harvard Murals
This new presentation of Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals features innovative, noninvasive digital projection as a conservation approach. Read more.
The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States
In 2008, the Harvard Art Museums were among the 50 recipients of a national gift program that distributed 2,500 works from Dorothy and Herbert Vogel’s personal collection of contemporary art to museums in all 50 states. Read more.
Jesse Aron Green: Ärztliche Zimmergymnastik
Jesse Aron Green’s celebrated multi-component installation Ärztliche Zimmergymnastik comprises an 80-minute projected video and associated sculptural and photographic works and drawings, all of which were recently acquired by the Harvard Art Museums. Read more.
European and American Pop Art, 1955-1975
This installation presents works by some of the central figures in the history of international pop art, from David Hockney in Great Britain and Gerhard Richter in Germany to Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol in New York. Read more.
A History of Photography
Photographs have historically functioned as both documents and pictures, a dual role that has given them a special persuasive power. Read more.
Corita Kent and the Language of Pop
American artist Corita Kent juxtaposed spiritual, pop cultural, literary, and political writings alongside symbols of consumer culture and modern life in order to create bold images and prints during the 1960s. Read more.
Body Image in French Art and Visual Culture (18th and 19th Centuries)
The goal of this installation is to consider the role of different artists and mediums (drawing, sculpture, print) in producing the modern understanding of the body. Read more.
Art of Jazz: Form
Jazz in all its variety had, and continues to have, an important effect on art making in the United States and Europe. Read more.
Beyond Bosch: The Afterlife of a Renaissance Master in Print
The art of Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450–1516) is characterized by fantastic creatures, fire-breathing monsters, and apocalyptic visions of Hell. Read more.
Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia
Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia surveys contemporary Indigenous art from Australia, exploring the ways in which time is embedded within Indigenous artistic, social, historical, and philosophical life. Read more.
Drawings from the Age of Bruegel, Rubens, and Rembrandt
The Harvard Art Museums hold one of the most comprehensive U.S. collections of Netherlandish, Dutch, and Flemish drawings from the 15th to 18th century. Read more.
Prehistoric Pottery from Northwest China
Ancient pottery vessels are not only works of art but also representations of technical achievement, products of economic value, and windows into ancient history and society. Read more.
Flowers of Evil: Symbolist Drawings, 1870–1910
This exhibition explores the mysterious visual world of symbolism, an open-ended cultural phenomenon of the late 19th century that formed an important bridge between impressionism and modernism. Read more.
Folding, Refraction, Touch: Modern and Contemporary Art in Dialogue with Wolfgang Tillmans
Drawing on the strength of the Harvard Art Museums’ modern and contemporary art collections, this exhibition presents a major recent acquisition by renowned German artist Wolfgang Tillmans (b. Read more.
Vision and Justice: The Art of Citizenship
This University Teaching Gallery installation examines the contested relationship between art, justice, and African American culture from the 19th through 21st century in the United States. Read more.
Modern Art and Modernity
This University Teaching Gallery installation explores defining moments in the development of modern European and American art from the 18th through 20th century. Read more.
Doris Salcedo: The Materiality of Mourning
Doris Salcedo: The Materiality of Mourning brings together a deeply evocative constellation of recent works by Doris Salcedo (Colombian, b. 1958), the renowned Bogotá-based artist known for her sculptures and public installations that respond to the testimonies of survivors and victims of political violence. Read more.
Drawing: The Invention of a Modern Medium
Drawing became modern in the 18th century, when it left the confines of the artist’s studio to enter an expanded field of discourse, culture, politics, and social life. Read more.
The Philosophy Chamber: Art and Science in Harvard’s Teaching Cabinet, 1766–1820
Between 1766 and 1820, Harvard College assembled an extraordinary collection of paintings, portraits, and prints; mineral, plant, and animal specimens; scientific instruments; Native American artifacts; and relics from the ancient world. Read more.
A New Light on Bernard Berenson: Persian Paintings from Villa I Tatti
This focused exhibition features illustrated Persian manuscripts and detached folios that were collected in the early 20th century by Harvard alumnus Bernard Berenson (1865–1959), the famous American art historian and connoisseur of Italian Renaissance painting. Read more.
Adorning the Inner Court: Jun Ware for the Chinese Palace
The Harvard Art Museums hold the largest and finest collection in the West of a rare and strikingly beautiful type of ceramic ware used in the private quarters of the Forbidden City, the Chinese imperial palace in Beijing. Read more.
Reverie: Christopher Wilmarth, Before and After Mallarmé
In 1978, sculptor Christopher Wilmarth was asked by poet Frederick Morgan to illustrate his translation of a group of seven poems by the French symbolist Stéphane Mallarmé. Read more.
Technologies of the Image: Art in 19th-Century Iran
The 19th century was an era of heightened image-making in Iran. Read more.
Women in South Asian Art
Drawn from the Harvard Art Museums’ renowned South Asian art collection, this University Teaching Gallery installation complements an undergraduate course exploring images of women in South Asian art; the course takes a historical perspective in order to understand the politics of gender and the social status of women in today’s South Asia. Read more.
What about Revolution? Aesthetic Practices after 1917
Complementing undergraduate and graduate seminars on the role of modern artists in revolution, this University Teaching Gallery installation presents three new models of avant-garde aesthetic practice that developed in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917. Read more.
Rome: Eternal City
Rome, known as the “common fatherland,” was the goal of pilgrims, travelers, and artists from all over Europe. Read more.
Fernando Bryce: The Book of Needs
The Harvard Art Museums present Fernando Bryce’s The Book of Needs, a multipart work comprised of 81 ink-on-paper drawings. Read more.
Looking Back: The Western Tradition in Retrospect
The history of art is usually presented as a forward march, with individual works studied as points along a path of progress to the present. Read more.
Inventur—Art in Germany, 1943–55
The first exhibition of its kind, Inventur examines the highly charged artistic landscape in Germany from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s. Read more.
Analog Culture: Printer’s Proofs from the Schneider/Erdman Photography Lab, 1981–2001
This exhibition takes an unprecedented look at the productive and dynamic collaboration between photographer and printer, through the lens of the Harvard Art Museums’ Schneider/Erdman Printer’s Proof Collection, a remarkable group of nearly 450 photographs printed over three decades by Gary Schneider of the Manhattan-based studio Schneider/Erdman, Inc. The collection includes works by Richard Avedon, James Casebere, Robert Gober, Nan Goldin, Peter Hujar, Gilles Peress, and David Wojnarowicz, among many other artists, photojournalists, and fashion photographers who made up New York’s cultural milieu in the 1980s and ’90s. Read more.
Nam June Paik: Screen Play
Nam June Paik: Screen Play presents a group of works by groundbreaking global artist Nam June Paik (1932–2006). Read more.
Adam and Eve
For most of history, humans expressed ethical ideas through stories, and of all these the story of Adam and Eve has been perhaps the most powerful and enduring. Read more.
Mutiny: Works by Géricault
Mutiny: Works by Géricault explores compelling images by the Romantic period’s most influential artist, Théodore Géricault (1791–1824), whose powerful legacy endured long past his untimely death in his early thirties. Read more.
Animal-Shaped Vessels from the Ancient World: Feasting with Gods, Heroes, and Kings
Animal-Shaped Vessels from the Ancient World: Feasting with Gods, Heroes, and Kings brings together nearly 60 elaborate vessels of animal shape from collections in the United States and Europe. Read more.
Displaying Latin America
The Americas were a vital stage of transatlantic encounters in modern architecture. Read more.
The Bauhaus and Harvard
The Bauhaus and Harvard — mounted in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany — presents nearly 200 works by 74 artists, drawn almost entirely from the Busch-Reisinger Museum’s extensive Bauhaus collection. Read more.
Hans Arp’s Constellations II
This exhibition presents the room-sized wall relief Constellations II by Alsatian artist and poet Hans Arp (1886–1966); it is the work’s first public viewing in 15 years. Read more.
Prince Shōtoku: The Secrets Within
This exhibition gives visitors the rare chance to encounter a significant 13th-century Japanese icon, Prince Shōtoku at Age Two, from the inside out. Read more.
Japan on Paper
Japanese woodblock prints, with their sophisticated designs and bold planes of color, have long attracted viewers and inspired Western artists such as Vincent van Gogh and Mary Cassatt. Read more.
Winslow Homer: Eyewitness
Discover how celebrated American artist Winslow Homer’s work for the illustrated periodical Harper’s Weekly helped shape his later career as a painter and watercolorist. Read more.
Early Christian Africa: Arts of Transformation
Christianity has important early roots in the Nile Valley and Ethiopia. Read more.
Critical Printing
Critical Printing is an experimental course offered by Harvard’s Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies that integrates studio and seminar instruction, allowing students to explore print as artists and scholars simultaneously. Read more.
Crossing Lines, Constructing Home: Displacement and Belonging in Contemporary Art
What does it mean to be displaced from culture and home? Read more.
Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection
Painting Edo — the largest exhibition ever presented at the Harvard Art Museums — offers a window onto the supremely rich visual culture of Japan’s early modern era. Read more.
States of Play: Prints from Rembrandt to Delsarte
Immerse yourself in the world of printmaking, tracing how artists move step by step to painstakingly rework and refine their images. Read more.
A Colloquium in the Visual Arts
Humanities 20 is an introduction to the study of the humanities through major works of art and architecture from around the world: everything from ancient Persian sculpture to modern stop-motion photography. Read more.
Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography since 1970
Explore the impacts of military activity on the American landscape—and the ways in which photography supports activism in response to these effects. Read more.
Social Fabrics: Inscribed Textiles from Medieval Egyptian Tombs
Discover what textiles made and worn in medieval Egypt tell us about connection and belonging in a diversifying world. Read more.
Prints from the Brandywine Workshop and Archives: Creative Communities
Discover innovative prints from the Brandywine Workshop and Archives, a nonprofit cultural institution celebrated for its collaborative and inventive approach. Read more.
White Shadows: Anneliese Hager and the Camera-less Photograph
Explore how the innovative camera-less photography of German artist Anneliese Hager (1904–1997) relates to science and poetry, in this first exhibition to focus on the role of women makers in the history of the photogram. Read more.
Crossroads: Drawing the Dutch Landscape
Towns, farms, waterways, and woods—discover how Rembrandt, Van Goyen, Van Ruisdael, and more approached these subjects as meditations on humankind’s relationship with the environment. Read more.
Earthly Delights: 6,000 Years of Asian Ceramics
Transport yourself over millennia and marvel at East Asian ceramics of all shapes, styles, colors, and textures. Read more.
Funerary Portraits from Roman Egypt: Facing Forward
Come face to face with portraits of Egyptians who lived during the Roman period and discover what role these images played in funerary rituals as well as what modern technical study can reveal about ancient artistic practices. Read more.
A Colloquium in the Visual Arts
The Harvard course A Colloquium in the Visual Arts (Humanities 20) is an introduction to the study of the humanities through major works of art and architecture from around the world: everything from ancient Persian sculpture to modern stop-motion photography. Read more.
Dare to Know: Prints and Drawings in the Age of Enlightenment
See how the graphic arts inspired, shaped, and gave immediacy to new ideas in the Enlightenment era, encouraging individuals to follow their own reason when seeking to know more. Read more.
A World Within Reach: Greek and Roman Art from the Loeb Collection
Glimpse into ancient Greek and Roman worlds—and see your own with fresh eyes. Read more.
Artisanal Modernism
Complementing seminars taught in Harvard’s Department of History of Art and Architecture in 2022 and 2023, this installation probes the relationship between modernist painting and modern textiles to subvert the traditional hierarchy of value within which these arts have typically been understood. Read more.
From the Andes to the Caribbean: American Art from the Spanish Empire
Discover a more complete story of art from the Spanish Empire—and a broader definition of American art—through an unparalleled collection of Spanish colonial paintings. Read more.
American Watercolors, 1880–1990: Into the Light
Discover how American watercolorists from Winslow Homer to Hannah Wilke leveraged the imaginative and experimental capacity of the medium to create marvelously diverse works over more than a century. Read more.
Seeing in Art and Medicine
Try your hand at close-looking activities in this interactive exhibition, which examines objects from across the collections through the lens of the medical humanities and the human questions that doctors face in their daily work. Read more.
A Colloquium in the Visual Arts
The Harvard course A Colloquium in the Visual Arts (Humanities 20) is an introduction to the study of the humanities through major works of art and architecture from around the world: everything from Japanese woodblock prints to modern stop-motion photography. Read more.
Objects of Addiction: Opium, Empire, and the Chinese Art Trade
How did the sale of opium in China by Massachusetts merchants in the 19th century contribute to a growing appetite for Chinese art at Harvard at the start of the 20th century? Read more.
Wolf Vostell: Dé-coll/age Is Your Life
See how Wolf Vostell created art, as well as an expansive aesthetic philosophy, that challenged human complacency toward war, genocide, and other catastrophic world events. Read more.
Picasso: War, Combat, and Revolution
Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica was commissioned by the Spanish government for the 1937 Paris World’s Fair. Read more.
LaToya M. Hobbs: It’s Time
Immerse yourself in a day in the life of a contemporary artist through a tour de force of monumental printmaking. Read more.
Future Minded: New Works in the Collection
Examine the museums’ recent acquisitions, spanning centuries and media. Read more.
Imagine Me and You: Dutch and Flemish Encounters with the Islamic World, 1450–1750
Discover a story of cross-cultural artistic connection over 300 years between the Dutch, the Flemish, and the Islamic world. Read more.
A Colloquium in the Visual Arts
The Harvard course A Colloquium in the Visual Arts (Humanities 20) is an introduction to the study of the humanities through major works of art and architecture from around the world: everything from ancient Greek vases and Japanese woodblock prints to Baroque sculpture and cinematic art. Read more.
Art of the Black World
What would be lost without an understanding of art of the Black world? Read more.
Made in Germany? Art and Identity in a Global Nation
Discover an array of artworks that transcend borders and spotlight the complexities of modern German identity. Read more.
Joana Choumali: Languages of West African Marketplaces
*Explore the complex and multinational economy of secondhand T-shirts through the vibrant mixed-media photographs of award-winning Ivorian artist Joana Choumali.*_Joana Choumali: Languages of West African Marketplaces_ showcases 12 life-size hand-quilted and embroidered portraits created from combinations of photographs taken in the marketplaces of Côte d’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast) and Ghana, where secondhand clothing discarded by the United States and Europe plays a central role in the economy of goods. Read more.
The Art of Looking: 150 Years of Art History at Harvard
“Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands think for one who can see.” —John RuskinIn 1874–75, the Harvard University course catalogue offered for the first time a series of electives in the history of art. Read more.
Edvard Munch: Technically Speaking
Discover the experimental methods of Edvard Munch, who creatively explored materials and techniques across media. Read more.
The Solomon Collection: Dürer to Degas and Beyond
Explore a remarkable collection of artworks that span the centuries and discover how it was assembled over seven decades. Read more.
Edna Andrade: Imagination Is Never Static
*Celebrate a 20th-century artist whose innovative abstract drawings and paintings continue to inspire.*_Edna Andrade: Imagination Is Never Static_ offers a new look at the practice of acclaimed artist and educator Edna Andrade (1917–2008). Read more.
Introduction to the History of Art
*This installation, organized by Harvard faculty in the History of Art and Architecture, accompanies the course Introduction to the History of Art (HAA 10).*What is art? Read more.
Sketch, Shade, Smudge: Drawing from Gray to Black
*Discover how simple tools can be powerful vehicles for artistic expression.*This exhibition celebrates the act of drawing using familiar tools—charcoal, chalk, crayon, and graphite. Read more.
Critical Printing
With its unexpected juxtapositions among little-known prints, this installation is designed to generate experimental thinking. Read more.