What makes a photograph an appropriate object for a teaching museum? How do objects invite us to consider and to activate their multiple social, economic, and political realities across time? How can an object encourage curators to acknowledge the impacts of and to relinquish our structures and voices of authority? In this talk, photography curator Makeda Best will explore the history of photography collecting at Harvard and share her work to foreground new perspectives, contexts of interpretation, and historical connections.

This talk is part of a series inspired by ReFrame, a museum-wide initiative to reimagine the function, role, and future of the university art museum. These talks examine difficult histories, foreground untold stories, and experiment with new approaches to the collections of the Harvard Art Museums, reflecting the concerns of our world today.

TAKE A CLOSER LOOK:

+ Watch more about ReFraming the Harvard Art Museums: ReFraming The Collections at the Harvard Art Museums.

+ Marion Post Wolcott, American, “Cashiers Paying Off Cotton Pickers, Marcella Plantation, Mileston, Mississippi, 1939.” Gelatin Silver Print. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Transfer from the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Gift of Wolcott Community Management, 2.2002.1572. hvrd.art/o/157798.

+ John Simmons, American, “Window Writing, Chicago,” 1969. Pigment print. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Fund for the Acquisition of Photographs, 2018.118. © John Simmons. hvrd.art/o/361761.

+ Exhibition “Crossing Lines, Constructing Home: Displacement and Belonging in Contemporary Art:” harvardartmuseums.org/crossinglines

+ Exhibition “Time is Now: Photography and Social Change in James Baldwin’s America” at the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts: https://bit.ly/36vD44w.

SPEAKERS:
+ Makeda Best, Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography, Division of Modern and Contemporary Art, Harvard Art Museums;
+ Lynette Roth, Daimler Curator of the Busch Reisinger Museum and Head of the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art, Harvard Art Museums.

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Recorded March 9, 2021. © President and Fellows of Harvard College. For questions related to permission for commercial use of this video, please contact the Department of Digital Imaging and Visual Resources at [email protected].

On this tour commemorating Native American Heritage Month, student tour guide Jacqueline Zoeller contrasts colonial visions of the Western U.S. landscape, such as Albert Bierstadt’s Rocky Mountains, “Lander’s Peak” (1863), with the realities lived and portrayed by Native American artists. Stops on the tour will include Diné artist Will Wilson’s "Mexican Hat Disposal Cell" (2020), a landscape photograph of Halchita, Utah, the Navajo Nation, featured in the special exhibition "Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography since 1970;" Apsáalooke artist Wendy Red Star’s photographic series "Four Seasons" (2006); and a group of photographs by Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara artist Zig Jackson from the 1990s that entered the museums’ collections only last year.

In collaboration with the Harvard University Native American Program (HUNAP), the Ho Family Student Guides have created a digital collection of some of the works at the museums that speak to the Native American experience, including the works discussed in this virtual tour. This collection will help spur further conversations about Native American representation at the museums: harvardartmuseums.org/profile/DAPPTours/mycollections/5972/native-american-experience-final/public

TAKE A CLOSER LOOK:

+ Learn more about the Harvard University Native American Program: hunap.harvard.edu/

+ Explore the exhibition "Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography since 1970": harvardartmuseums.org/devourtheland

+ Join an upcoming tour via harvardartmuseums.org/calendar

+ Explore more virtual tours and chats with our student guides: Ho Family Student Guides

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The Ho Family Student Guide Program at the Harvard Art Museums prepares students to create original, research-based tours and interpretive materials about the collections. Rooted in the Student Guides' individual perspectives, each tour offers a unique, thematic viewpoint and opportunity for conversation.

Speakers:
+ Jacqueline Zoeller, Ho Family Student Guide at the Harvard Art Museums, Harvard College Class of 2023;
+ Jason Packineau, Community Coordinator, Harvard University Native American Program
+ Moderated by John Sheeran, Visitor Services Supervisor and Technical Support, Harvard Art Museums.

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All images and graphics used in the video belong to their respective owners and this channel does not claim any right over them. Copyright Disclaimer: Any use of copyrighted content on this channel constitutes “fair use” pursuant to 17 U.S. Code § 107 as it is utilized for the purpose of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research.

Video Thumbnail Image: Wendy Red Star, Apsáalooke, "Spring" from the series "Four Seasons," 2006. Archival pigment print. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Loren G. Lipson, M.D., 2018.188.3. © Wendy Red Star. hvrd.art/o/362025

Video Recorded November 4, 2021. © President and Fellows of Harvard College. For questions related to permission for commercial use of this video, please contact the Department of Digital Imaging and Visual Resources at [email protected].

Join curator Mary Schneider Enriquez for a close look at the pioneering work of artist Gego and her place within the burgeoning Venezuelan art scene in the mid-20th century. Focusing on a new acquisition from the artist’s Drawings without Paper series, this talk will explore Gego’s practice of marrying a language of structure with an evocative sense of experimentation, in sculptures that combine materials typically pieced together by hand.

TAKE A CLOSER LOOK:

+ Gego (Gertrude Goldschmidt), Venezuelan, "Drawing without Paper 85/1" (Dibujo sin Papel 85/1), 1985. Wire, string, wood and aluminum tubes. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of John Cowles, by exchange; Francis H. Burr Memorial Fund; purchase through the generosity of Charlotte Wagner, and Estrellita Brodsky, 2020.3. © Fundación Gego. hvrd.art/o/367314

SPEAKERS:
+ Mary Schneider Enriquez, Houghton Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

This talk is part of a series inspired by ReFrame, a museum-wide initiative to reimagine the function, role, and future of the university art museum. These talks examine difficult histories, foreground untold stories, and experiment with new approaches to the collections of the Harvard Art Museums, reflecting the concerns of our world today.

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All images and graphics used in the video belong to their respective owners and this channel does not claim any right over them. Copyright Disclaimer: Any use of copyrighted content on this channel constitutes “fair use” pursuant to 17 U.S. Code § 107 as it is utilized for the purpose of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research.

Video Thumbnail Image: Gego in her studio, 1984, Photo: Isidro, Núñezm. © Fundación Gego, Courtesy Dominique Lévy Gallery, New York / London.

Video: Recorded December 14, 2021. © President and Fellows of Harvard College. This video is restricted for internal, research and archival use only. For questions related to permission for commercial use of this video, please contact the Department of Digital Imaging and Visual Resources at [email protected].

The fable of the 19th-century European “discovery” of Japanese prints and their catalytic effect on Impressionist painting is by now comfortably worn, threadbare even. But what were painters in Europe actually encountering?

In this talk, curator Rachel Saunders takes a close look at a major new acquisition that shines a distinctly different light on European interest in “Japanese art,” and the ways in which this new category was constructed in Japan itself.

TAKE A CLOSER LOOK:

+ Watch more talks which ReFrame the Harvard Art Museums’ collections: ReFraming The Collections at the Harvard Art Museums.

+ Roger Shimomura, American, “Shimomura Crossing the Delaware,” 2010. Acrylic on canvas. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Raymond L. Ocampo Jr., Sandra Oleksy Ocampo, and Robert P. Ocampo © Roger Shimomura. npg.si.edu/learn/classroom-resource/roger-shimomura.

+ Claude Monet, French, “La Japonaise (Camille Monet in Japanese Costume),” 1876. Oil on canvas. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 56.147. https://bit.ly/3yrcJkw

+ Watanabe Kōkan, Japanese, “Kesa no aki 今朝の秋” (“This Morning’s Autumn”), Taishō era (1918). Pair of six-panel folding screens; ink and color on silk. Harvard Art Museums, acquired with a fund established by Ernest B. and Helen Pratt Dane for the purchase of Asian art, 2017.80. hvrd.art/o/358128.

+ Watanabe Seitei, “Birds and Flowers of the Twelve Months, Japanese,” Meiji era, c. 1890. Pair of six-panel folding screens; ink and color on silk. Harvard Art Museums, acquired with a fund established by Ernest B. and Helen Pratt Dane for the purchase of Asian art, 2020.252. hvrd.art/o/369284.

+ Watch “Surface Tension: Modern Japanese Painting Finds New Life,” featuring ground-breaking research and conservation of remarkable 1960 painting "Fuyu 冬" ("Winter") by the Japanese abstract impressionist painter Kumi Sugaï: vimeo.com/486496477.

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SPEAKERS:

+ Rachel Saunders, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Curator of Asian Art, Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art, Harvard Art Museums;
+ Moderated by Susanne Ebbinghaus, George M.A. Hanfmann Curator of Ancient Art, and Head of the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art, Harvard Art Museums.

This talk is part of a series inspired by “ReFrame,” a museum-wide initiative to reimagine the function, role, and future of the university art museum. These talks examine difficult histories, foreground untold stories, and experiment with new approaches to the collections of the Harvard Art Museums, reflecting the concerns of our world today.

Recorded May 4, 2021. © President and Fellows of Harvard College. For questions related to permission for commercial use of this video, please contact the Department of Digital Imaging and Visual Resources at [email protected].

German Expressionists understood frames as integral to their paintings—often designing, carving, and painting the frames themselves. And yet, over the last century, many such frames were removed by art dealers, collectors, and even museums.

In this talk, curator Lynette Roth tells the story of how a team of colleagues reframed the Busch-Reisinger Museum’s paintings collection in advance of the Harvard Art Museums’ re-opening in 2014. Based on extensive research and recent scholarship on and growing interest in German Expressionist frames, these “new” frames replicate lost originals, thus restoring as close as possible the artists’ original intent.

TAKE A CLOSER LOOK:

+ Explore Max Beckmann’s "Self-Portrait in Tuxedo" with Lynette Roth: vimeo.com/436841096

+ Exhibition "Never Apart. Frames and Pictures by the Brücke Artists": bruecke-museum.de/en/programm/ausstellungen/607/never-apart-frames-and-pictures-by-the-brcke-artists. Exhibition catalog (in german): spark.adobe.com/page/n7VBpNcO59tG0/

+ Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, “Self-Portrait with Cat,” 1920. Oil on commercially woven cotton fabric, Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, Museum purchase, BR50.12. hvrd.art/o/304414.

+ Emil Nolde, “Mulatto,” 1913. Oil on canvas. Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, G. David Thompson Fund, BR54.117. hvrd.art/o/223804.

Speakers:
+ Lynette Roth, Daimler Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum and Head, Division of Modern and Contemporary Art;
+ Moderated by Soyoung Lee, Landon and Lavinia Clay Chief Curator of the Harvard Art Museums.

This talk is part of a series inspired by ReFrame, a museum-wide initiative to reimagine the function, role, and future of the university art museum. These talks examine difficult histories, foreground untold stories, and experiment with new approaches to the collections of the Harvard Art Museums, reflecting the concerns of our world today.

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Copyright Disclaimer: Any use of copyrighted content on this channel constitutes “fair use” pursuant to 17 U.S. Code § 107 as it is utilized for the purpose of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research.

Recorded Tuesday, June 29, 2021.© President and Fellows of Harvard College. Video: Division of Academic & Public Programming. For questions related to permission for commercial use of this video, please contact the Department of Digital Imaging and Visual Resources at [email protected].