Ho Family Student Guide Program at the Harvard Art Museums: A Unique and Interdisciplinary Approach to Art

The Ho Family Student Guide Program at the Harvard Art Museums inspires a passion for art driven by students that is unparalleled by other college art programs. Upon walking through the doors, visitors are not only greeted by a beautiful courtyard lit by natural sunlight but also warmly welcomed by Harvard undergraduates, excited to showcase their knowledge and enthusiasm for the art presented in the museum.

Camran Mani, Manager of Student Programs at the Harvard Art Museums, had been involved with the museums through various internship and fellowship programs while working towards a Ph.D. in the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. He took over the Ho Family Student Guide Program in 2019 and described it as “centrifugal — there’s a core, and then a lot of things that build out from it.”

The core consists of about 25 undergraduate students across numerous disciplines and concentrations who each create unique research-based tours of the Harvard Art Museums.

“Almost all the public tours led at this museum are led by Harvard undergrads,” Mani said. “Each student in the program is working on their tour, a lot of times coming out of their academic interest, and personal interest.”

Each tour consists of three stops at any work within the museums’ galleries of the student guide’s choosing. One of the guides, Ricardo A. Fernandes Garcia ’27, says that the student-led tours are unlike any other.

“I really love the Harvard Art Museums, especially the Student Guide program, because the students get to create their own tours, as opposed to typically, when I go to art museums, they have tours that are either based on ‘a’ a gallery or ‘b’ what they call the highlights tour, which is where they show you their most famous pieces,” Garcia said.

According to Mani, “the primary goal is to bring Harvard students into a better sense of art museums as a resource for all kinds of academic and personal pursuits. The museum is a great resource, and it’s an interdisciplinary resource,” he said.

Mani also emphasized the importance of sharing this resource beyond the Harvard community.

“There’s a real nice kind of symbiosis — the need, the requirement to share with the public ends up kind of forcing everybody to be that much more serious,” he said.

Another student tour guide, Hannah E. Gadway ’25, a Crimson Arts editor, praises the program’s interdisciplinary aspect.

“One of our guides has a tour about astrophysics and art, and that’s something that you never would have maybe thought about before. It makes sure that we’re not only looking at art through the art history mindset, which can be a little stifling,” Gadway said.

Though the research and work that the students put into their tours is largely independent, a strength of the program is the collaborative structure that allows them to learn from each other.

“We do these things called ‘object workshops,’ where it’s basically like presenting a piece of your tour in progress to the rest of the group. And what happens is not only does the presenter get feedback on what they’re doing, but at the same time, everyone else is getting exposed to other parts of the collection,” Mani said.

But the program’s collaborative spirit doesn’t end here — the program also offers a free U.S. citizenship course, provided in partnership with the St. Mark Community Education Program, to prepare aspiring citizens for the USCIS naturalization test using art from the museums’ collections.

An additional recent development in the program is the rise of its social media usage.

“We have a social media account, Harvard Art Happens, which, especially during the pandemic, when everything was virtual, became this big output source where we were doing a lot of creative videos. There was a series of YouTube videos with makeup tutorials based on art history,” Mani said.

The program is already proving to be a great addition to the Harvard Art Museums, continuously expanding its horizons.

Visitors can catch the free in-person student spotlight tours every Saturday and Sunday at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.