Campus Arts Starter-Kit: The Crimson’s Arts Board’s Guide to Harvard’s Arts Resources

With the start of a new academic year, it’s the perfect time to take advantage of the impressive array of resources, opportunities, and collections for the arts at Harvard. Here are some tips for making the most of the lesser-known resources for arts engagement available right here on campus, courtesy of The Crimson’s Arts Board.

Harvard’s Century of Sky

The Curator of Astronomical Photographs, Thom Burns, slips a glass plate negative out of its envelope sheath. The plate is sprinkled with black pinpricks, representing faraway stars and galaxies in that region of the sky. He places the plate over a glowing screen, illuminating the glass. The light exaggerates the contrast between the dark specks of light and the empty void of space, and clusters seem to form and swirl before my eyes.

This plate is one of 600,000 in the Harvard College Observatory Plate Stacks. The collection, which spans from 1880 to 1990, records a century of the sky. Yet they are also artifacts of history — the bulk of the collection was managed by Harvard’s astronomical computers, a team of women who studied the data encoded on the plates during the late 19th century and early 20th. While their work was regarded as menial at the time, these women made some of the most important contributions to astronomy through their careful data analysis.

While the plates make up most of the collection, the Harvard College Observatory also owns some fantastic astronomical photographs — like the early lunar daguerreotypes and the oldest photograph of an eclipse I was introduced to on a class visit for History of Art and Architecture 177M: “Art and Science of the Moon.”

The glass plates are one of Harvard’s most underappreciated resources; they are both invaluable data points in time-domain astronomy and repositories of Harvard’s history. Check out DASCH and Project PHaEDRA, initiatives that aim to incorporate the women astronomers’ logbooks and annotations in an online database.

—Staff writer Arielle C. Frommer can be reached at arielle.frommer@thecrimson.com.

Art, Film, and Visual Studies Offerings

As a joint Art, Film, and Visual Studies and History of Art and Architecture concentrator, I thought I knew about all the art resources available to students. I thought wrong. For starters, all students can register for AFVS classes via lottery or instructor approval with absolutely no experience required. In these classes, students not only get 24/7 swipe access to the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, the home of the AFVS department, but also gain access to the myriad of materials and tools housed in the Carpenter Center.

The Carpenter Center, Le Corbusier’s only building in North America, is home to studios for drawing and sculpture, the Harvard Film Archive and photography lab in the basement, and a theater equipped for 16mm and 35mm film viewing. The first and third floors are reserved as exhibition spaces for contemporary artists or the AFVS Senior Thesis exhibit. The second floor houses the wood and metal shops, the capabilities of which extend to glass and beyond, and the fourth floor contains the Fabrication Lab to bring your ideas to life. Take advantage of all Harvard has to offer by registering for an AFVS class and using these unique tools right at your fingertips.

—Staff writer Madelyn E. McKenzie can be reached at madelyn.mckenzie@thecrimson.com.

Holworthy Basement’s First-Year Arts Room

The first-year art room is located in the basement of Holworthy Hall, behind one of those doors that easily goes unnoticed. It’s a small, cluttered room whose walls and ceiling aren’t decorated with art, as one would expect, but with pipes of loud, traveling water that add to the creative experience.

Every visit unveils a new hidden treasure. Watercolors, colored pencils, beads, glitter discovered in the art room became some of the artwork that hangs on my walls, some of my favorite memories with close friends, and I found the clarity that I could not find elsewhere.

Among the prestigious campus libraries, spacious common rooms, and dining halls, the Holworthy basement does not seem like the obvious choice. Yet, in this space I found serenity, inspiration and warmth — and glitter. Now that my freshman days are over, I hope another unassuming freshman stumbles across that door and finds what I did.

—Staff writer Olga Kerameos can be reached at olga.kerameos@thecrimson.com.

The Harvard Hiphop Archive

The Harvard Hiphop Archive is the ghostwriter for many of the Hutchins Center’s best arts engagements, from “Hiphop 50: Curated by Ice T & DJ Afrika Islam” to book talks and maker-spaces. Secretly stowed atop the Hutchins Center, the Hiphop archive boasts an impressive roster of Nasir Jones Fellows, Hip Hop artists, and scholars with prominent alumni like Dee-1 and Bettina Love. More visibility for this amazing space equipped with action figures, vinyl records, and graffiti lore galore could open up a world of possibilities to honor hip-hop as the mode of scholarship and cultural movement it can be. Engaging students and the broader Boston community alike, the Harvard Hiphop Archive to the core of the collaborative spirit and low barrier to entry that hip-hop is founded on.

—Staff writer Elyse G. Martin-Smith can be reached at elyse.martinsmith@thecrimson.com.

The Fine Arts Library

Easily one of the best perks of being a Harvard student is the access to world-renowned historical collections in and outside of classes — if you know where to look.

While it might be an unlikely place to look, Harvard’s impressive collection of materials and resources in the history of art and architecture finds itself tucked away with the Economics department in the Littauer Center. Just off the main entrance, the Fine Arts Library offers a welcome reprieve from the austerity of its building. The space features far more than books; visitors can find a capacious collection of digital images and slides of art and architecture, a diverse array of special collections, arts-related board games, and friendly, knowledgeable librarians eager to assist you in navigating it all. Whether you’re looking for a quiet space to study, like a peaceful reading room, support for your research paper, or just want to spend some time exploring historical photographs, rare books, artists’ books, or Chinese rubbings, the Fine Arts Library has something for all.

—Staff writer Marin E. Gray can be reached at marin.gray@thecrimson.com.