Rockwell Advocates Arts at Harvard

Board of Overseers Member and Arts First executive producer John Rockwell ’62 likes to call himself an “agitator for the arts at Harvard,” but this role is only one of many self-styled niches he’s carved for himself. He’s also the senior cultural correspondent for The New York Times, a title created specifically for him that allows him to visit far-flung corners of the globe and investigate whatever he finds interesting in the arts world.

Rockwell’s passion and knowledge of the arts is matched only by his engagement with the Harvard community and his role as overseer, which he says he relishes for—among other things—the social opportunities it provides.

“I like rubbing shoulders with smart people,” he says.

But Rockwell’s commitment and interest in Harvard goes well beyond its social perks, as he struts his encyclopedic knowledge of the University and issues concerning students and administrators. Rockwell has brought his personal passion for the arts to his official duties as an overseer, and says he has a responsibility to advocate for the arts with his position.

“To make it more interesting, an overseer has to capitalize on his or her personal interests,” he says. “My primary goal has been to extrapolate the role of liaison to that of agitation on the subject of the arts.”

The Career Track

As senior cultural correspondent, Rockwell writes on every art form—from music to dance, theater and visual art—and says he considers his job “diverse and universal because it covers all forms of human expression.”

Rockwell’s lifelong affair with the arts began during his undergraduate years at Harvard, where he says he “did odd things”—including working at WHRB, participating in the madrigal club and singing in the chorus of the Harvard-Radcliffe Opera.

After graduation, Rockwell pursued a doctorate from Berkeley in German cultural history, writing his dissertation on operatic reform in Berlin in the 1920s. He freelanced in California before joining the New York Times in 1972 as a classical music critic.

A decade later, Rockwell went packing for Paris to become the Times’ European cultural correspondent.

“When I was in Europe, I had a continent to myself,” Rockwell says, reminiscing about his daunting post as the sole European critic. “I could write anything I wanted, because I was the guy there.”

But Rockwell returned to New York in 1994 to direct the annual international arts festival at the Lincoln Center. After making his mark fashioning the first years of the festival, Rockwell again came home to the Times in 1998 to become editor of Sunday’s Arts and Leisure section.

Although Rockwell has published several books during his career, mostly about music, his writing has always focused on shorter pieces for the newspaper.

“The kinds of pieces I enjoy most are small and essay-like,” he says. “I like to write about stuff that interests me and broaden it out so that it interests others as well.”

Overseeing Harvard Arts

Rockwell’s position as an overseer makes him a key figure in discussing the role and the future of the arts at Harvard.

This is a crucial moment for reconsidering the role of arts, he says, and the still-young administration of University President Lawrence H. Summers could substantially change how the arts function at Harvard.

Rockwell says he questions why the arts at Harvard have remained at the periphery of undergraduate life.

“Harvard has always been a place where the arts took a secondary position to academic work, practiced privately,” he says.

Prospective students who want to concentrate in theater choose other schools over Harvard, Rockwell says. And so he’s challenged Harvard’s attitude towards the arts for years. In an article in the Fall 2002 issue of Arts Spectrum he asked, “Why should the performing arts be optional when other areas are deemed integral?”

But Rockwell says he’s careful to consider how incorporating the arts into Harvard’s undergraduate curriculum might change the character of art production and its quality. He worries that increasing the arts component of the curriculum might steer students away from meaningful and exciting extracurricular activities. And there are practical difficulties in changing the curriculum—like recruiting world-class professionals to serve on the faculty.

“There is an argument to be made that the kind of person who is attracted to be a teacher of arts in Cambridge, Massachusetts is not going to be the best in his field. If [arts education] is excessively curricular, undergraduates may end up being taught by second-raters,” he says.

Still, Rockwell says that he does not know what direction arts education at Harvard should take. His goal, he says, “is to make the artistic experience for everyone at Harvard as interesting and smart as possible.”

And he says he’ll continue to beat his drum for the arts.

In the meantime, Rockwell says he looks forward to Arts First, which he executive produces. He says that the chance to hop from one stimulating event to another on a beautiful May weekend is “just plain fun.”