Many scholars write about imperial crimes as their object of study — that is, as something sealed in the past that can be separated from the reparations due.
Harvard University
Harvard Students Install a Memorial Site for Opioid Victims at Arthur M. Sackler Museum
The installation featured the names of 250 people who died from opioid overdoses recorded on the museum’s stairs.
Harvard’s Complicit History with Slavery
Slavery in the Hands of Harvard is a small but remarkably effective look at the historical ties and intersections between the school and the varied institutions of slavery.
The Bauhaus and Harvard on View at the Harvard Art Museums
Expansive exhibition features works by major artists, including student exercises, design objects, photographs, textiles, typography, paintings, and archival materials.
How a Fake Monster Crept Into our Museums
The Fiji Mermaid was an object of fantasy but for a long time it was on display as a specimen that many people believed was real.
A Forest Elegy for the Rapidly Vanishing American Hemlock Tree
Hemlock Hospice is an interpretive trail of sculptures in the Harvard Forest which draws attention to the vanishing eastern hemlock tree.
How Trompe-L’Oeil Added Information and Ornamentation to Maps
Look But Don’t Touch: Tactile Illusions on Maps at the Harvard Map Collection explores how cartographers have used trompe l’oeil illustrations on maps.
Thousands of Objects Tell of Sex, Drugs, and Transcendence Across the Centuries
Altered States: Sex, Drugs, and Transcendence in the Ludlow-Santo Domingo Library at Harvard’s Houghton Library explores the human desire to escape the ordinary.
Scientists Encode Living DNA with Muybridge’s Galloping Horse Film
Harvard scientists successfully recorded five frames of Eadweard Muybridge’s 1887 galloping horse on living bacteria, and retrieved the images in sequence.
Mourning Extinction with a Museum’s Animal Artifacts
In Next of Kin at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, artist Christina Seely repurposes natural history specimens for an emotional exhibition about animal extinction.
An Anthropological Look at Weapons of War as Objects of Art
The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard explores centuries of weapons from around the world that double as works of art.
Harvard Adds the Blackest Black to Its Historical Pigment Collection
Harvard Art Museums acquired a sample of Vantablack, a material that absorbs almost 100% of light.