Six Minority Portraits Unveiled

At a packed ceremony last Friday, the Harvard Foundation Minority Portraiture Project unveiled paintings of six minority honorees, including two women.

The portraits presented were the first of a continuing series funded in part by an $100,000 grant from University President Lawrence H. Summers. The series of portraits will include people of African American, Asian American, Latino American, and Native American heritage, and they will be placed in locations across campus.

“This is a historic day,” said Harvard Foundation Director S. Allen Counter, who presided over the ceremony.

The new portraits are of former Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III, Senior Admissions Officer David L. Evans, former Bureau of Study Counsel Director Kiyo Morimoto, Professor Emerita Rulan C. Pian, Professor Eileen Jackson Southern, and Rabb Research Professor of Anthropology Stanley J. Tambiah.

“The portraiture project is the dream of years of students and faculty who wish to see broader representation of the Harvard family in the portraiture exhibited around the University,” Counter said in a press release.

The ceremony also included remarks from Summers, Harvard Foundation Faculty Advisory Committee Chair Donald Pfister, portrait artist Stephen Coit ’71, students, and a performance by Chinese Acapella group C-Sharp.

The new paintings portrayed figures from across the University.

Epps, who died in 2003, was Dean of Students for over 30 years including during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s.

Evans has been working at the Harvard Admissions Office since 1970 and has also been a proctor in Harvard Yard and an assistant dean of freshmen. He is the namesake of a scholarship fund that has raised over $630,000.

Working at the Bureau of Study Counsel for 27 years, Morimoto trained and oversaw counselors, teaching assistants and students. He was lecturer on education in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and taught at several Harvard schools. He died in 2004.

Pian joined the Harvard Music Department to teach Chinese Music in 1961, and then was appointed professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and professor of music in 1974. She was also Master of South House at Radcliffe College from 1975 to 1978.

Southern was the first black female professor to be tenured at Harvard. An expert on Renaissance and African American music, she has received numerous awards, including a 2000 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of American Music. She died in 2002.

Tambiah is the Esther and Signey Rabb Research Professor of Anthropology at Harvard. He joined the faculty as professor in 1976. He retired from teaching in 2001, but has since continued his research on South Asia and comparative religion.

—Staff writer Matthew S. Blumenthal can be reached at mblument@fas.harvard.edu.