Spending the 'Night' with Art

Renoir and Radiohead? At the “Night at the Busch-Reisinger Museum” event on Feb. 22, the Organization of Undergraduate Representatives of the Harvard University Art Museums (OUR HUAM) presented striking contrasts like that one in an evening filled with unexpected convergences of the arts. The candlelit Calderwood Courtyard of the Fogg Museum was the nexus of the event, while music and dance performances, docent tours, and hipster tunes mingled.

Founded last year by Paris A. Spies-Gans ’09 and Anna M. Chen ’09, the group has made itself known on campus through events like this one—this was the second in OUR HUAM’s “Nights” series. The first was “Night at the Fogg Museum” and the third, “Night at the Sackler Museum,” is scheduled for May.

All three are part of the student-run association’s efforts to expose more undergraduates to the Harvard museums through initiatives organized by their peers.

LURING THEM IN

This “Night” differed from the first by incorporating tours of the Busch-Reisinger Museum for Germanic Art from Northern and Central Europe, in addition to student-led tours of the Fogg. The event also provided students with a sneak peak at the Busch-Reisinger’s new exhibition “Multiple Strategies: Beuys, Maciunas, Fluxus,” which opened last Saturday.

“Night at the Busch-Reisinger,” with its multiple performance acts—including appearances by the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra Quintet and a spandex-clad courtyard performance by the Crimson Dance Team—was inspired by OUR HUAM’s goal of “bringing all the different arts together,” according to Chen. Spies-Gans also cited their desire to “push the bounds of what is considered a museum” as being at the heart of the event’s relaxed atmosphere. The usual hush of the galleries was replaced with the strum of sophomore Jonathan M. Jackson ’09’s guitar and the chatter of the students discussing the works on the walls.

Publicized as featuring food from Felipe’s, Subway, and Unique Pizza, among others, the lure of free fare was successful in drawing in students often unmotivated towards art.

“You have this idea ‘someday I’ll check out the museums’ but this galvanized me to actually go,” Mariah F. Peebles ’09 said. For her, OUR HUAM’s event ultimately proved “a good excuse to do something I always sort of had in the back of my mind.”

SELF-RELIANCE

The nine different docent offerings showcased OUR HUAM’s objective of undergraduates educating their peers through the development of a Student Guide program. Each student-led tour was researched and delivered by a different OUR HUAM volunteer and involved the extensive discussion of three or four thematically linked pieces. For “Night at the Busch-Reisinger,” OUR HUAM expanded the breadth of the eight-minute, one-work format of “Night at the Fogg” because of demand for more comprehensive tours of the collections.

The twenty-minute tours, on topics ranging from “The Artist as a Social Being” to the especially popular “Sexy Ladies: the Female Nude,” were frequently interactive. According to Chen, they were intended to offer an exchange of ideas with docents passing on knowledge and, most importantly, providing an outlet for students to “connect with new people through art.”

“It’s the only research I’ve done where I feel like it’s not a chore, I just really like doing it,” said Marina Fisher ’09, leader of “Franz Marc and Germanic Art” on her task of preparing the tour.

Both Chen and Spies-Gans considered last Thursday’s event a success. There were 225 undergraduate guests in the first 40 minutes alone and the event’s overall turnout was 30 percent larger than that of “Night at the Fogg.”

ART GROUP WARFARE?

OUR HUAM isn’t the only HUAM-friendly group on campus, and one might have expected some conflict to stir in the background of the event. But instead, harmony reigned.

Student Friends of the Harvard University Art Museums, which offers museum membership to undergrads for $45 a semester and hosts more formal galas and curatorial events, had a table at “Night at the Busch-Reisinger” in case students wanted to actually join the museums as members.

“I was quite impressed with the turnout and the overall lively atmosphere,” said Student Friends Steering Committee member Philippa G. Eccles ’09. “It’s great to see people coming to the museums and taking advantage of this aspect of Harvard.”

“It definitely had an informal, fun feeling to it,” she added, “which is great because it makes people feel comfortable going to the museums and looking at the art.”

If the goal of the “Nights” was to attract the student population to the massive archive of art on campus, then Spies-Gans considers the event a mission accomplished.

“Lots of people have come up to me since the ‘Night,’ telling me that it was their first time at the museum, that they’re so glad they went and that they want to go back on their own,” she concludes. “This was exactly our goal in planning events such as the ‘Nights,’ so it’s incredibly gratifying.”

—Staff writer Anna K. Barnet can be reached at abarnet@fas.harvard.edu.