Arts On Top...for the First Time?

In the solitary spotlight, on a vast stage, Harvard University President Drew G. Faust closed her remarks celebrating the opening of the New College Theatre (NCT) on Wednesday with the following lines:

“Then prompt no more the follies you decry, / As tyrants doom their tools of guilt to die; / ‘Tis yours this night to bid the reign commence / Of rescu’d Nature, and reviving Sense; / To chase the charms of Sound, the pomp of Show, / For useful Mirth, and salutary Woe / Bid scenic Virtue form the rising age, / And Truth diffuse her radiance from the stage.”

Her words, the closing lines of a poem Samuel Johnson composed in 1747 to commemorate the opening of the Drury Lane Theatre in London, were applicable to the “pomp of show” of the NCT’s opening. But they may also fit with a prevalent theme in her new tenure: A bid to rescue the “charms of Sound” and “scenic Virtue.”

Faust’s inauguration was heralded by a flurry of artistic activity. Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison began the artistic celebration with a reading from her new “work in progress” the day before Faust’s inaguration.

That same evening, at Sanders Theatre, a performance by the Kuumba Singers and various alumni musically rejoiced in Faust’s new tenure. The evening was even hosted by actor John Lithgow ’67

But perhaps the most indicative highlight of the evening was when pianist Robert D. Levin ’68 wowed the audience with a celebratory improvisation, in which he assigned specific letters of the alphabet to the keys on the piano and composed a song using only the keys that corresponded with the letters in Faust’s full name.

With such a musical, literary, and performative welcome to the President’s Office and given Faust’s very arts-oriented tenure at Radcliffe, does Harvard have its first artistic President?

FORM AND SUBSTANCE

An unusual assemblage of objects adorns the walls of Harvard University President Drew G. Faust’s office in Massachusetts Hall. An Ovimbundu walking stick from Angola, a ceremonial ladle from Liberia, a Hunkpapa Sioux staff from the Great Plains of the Dakotas, and an impressionist painting by Milton Avery, entitled “Still Life with Woman,” all stray from the more traditional Western art that former Harvard presidents have used to decorate the room.

“Some curators from the Fogg are coming with some art that I selected last week. I think it would perk the place up a bit,” Faust said on her second day as President, before the art arrived.

Last spring, Faust was already stating a commitment to improving the conditions for the arts at Harvard. “I will be setting in motion a process to look at the place of the arts at Harvard,” she wrote at the time. “I would like to have a clearer sense of the range and variety of what is already going on, how it could be better integrated, and how we can build upon it to make the arts much more central in university life.”

She added, “We need to take a much more systematic and University-wide look at how Harvard approaches the arts with an eye to redefining both their place and their meaning within the institution.”

PAST PERFORMANCES

How Faust plans to manage such tasks is still not clear. However, a look at her work in creating the Radcliffe Institute shines a light on the type of inter-disciplinary, arts-friendly atmosphere she has forged in the past.

“The Radcliffe Institute itself is unique among institutes for advanced study in the United States in its inclusion of creative artists in the fellowship program,” said Barbara J. Grosz, interim dean of the Institute. “We find that it is invigorating to the artists and the academics alike to have this special kind of cross-disciplinary engagement.”

Under Faust’s tenure, the Radcliffe fellows produced an abundance of artistic works, according to Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities and Director of the Humanites Center Homi K. Bhabha.

“What Faust really did was to create a community, not only of scholars from the humanities and sciences, but from the creative world—filmmakers, writers, journalists and novelists,” Bhabha said.

Bhabha added that until then, there had been isolated academic institutions and artist colonies, but Faust managed to harmoniously combine the two at Radcliffe.

One of the more notable works that came out of the Radcliffe Institute during Faust’s days there was Claire Messud’s “The Emperor’s Children,” a New York Times Bestseller.

Artist Anna Schuleit is a former Radclife fellow whose work often consists of conceptual installations, and she said her time at the Institute was a fertile one for her work.

“I found the Radcliffe Institute to be, first and foremost, a warm, nourishing setting of independent research, pursued by scholars from every discipline,” Schuleit wrote in an e-mail. “As a visual artist, I experienced a year of truly interdisciplinary work, inspired by my exposure to the other fellows’s work and works in progress.”

“Having two research undergraduate assistants, who supported me throughout the various phases of my work, was a true gift,” she added. Schuleit also drew on the interdisciplinarity of Radcliffe when she needed assistance with one of her installations.

“At one point during my preparations for a commissioned project with the ICA [Institute of Contemporary Art] Boston, I was at a loss regarding the specific attributes of a certain type of glass I wanted to use,” she recalled. “Over lunch, I discussed this with my fellow Radcliffe fellows, and was pointed, via the fields of chemistry and physics, in the right direction.”

RESTOR’D NATURE?

With the success of creating this artistically nurturing atmosphere at Radcliffe, the question remains if Faust will try to bring reform to Harvard’s relatively independent creative enclaves.

Bhabha has hope. “We could do much more” with the arts, he said. He added that there could be better support for artistic endeavors at Harvard, more artistic works in syllabi, and increased artistic events in the Houses.

If Faust’s most recent statements on the arts, given at Wednesday’s opening of the NCT, are to be believed, Bhabha’s hopes might come to fruition.

“The theatre is well sited at the center of campus because it literally and figuratively makes arts more central to the university,” Faust said.

While Faust’s track record with the arts at Radcliffe may be nearly as impressive as her office’s new assemblage of worldly art, it remains to be seen what she will do to unite Harvard’s disparate creative communities.

As with so much of Faust’s agenda, little is known, but much is hoped for. Until then, the Harvard artistic community will just have to wait until the curtain rises, whatever the show may be.

—Claire M. Guehenno and Laurence H. M. Holland contributed to the reporting of this story.
—Staff writer Alexander B. Cohn can be reached at abcohn@fas.harvard.edu.