Extracurriculars

A scene from <em>Gatz,</em> a staged reading of <em>The Great Gatsby,</em> opening at the ART on January 7
The newly renovated Great Mammal Hall at the Harvard Museum of Natural History
Renaissance (and Harvard) man Oliver Wendell Holmes is celebrated at Countway Library
“Precipitating Rainfalls by Means of Explosives” (from an 1880 copy of <em>Scientific American</em>), on view at Cabot Library
This recently acquired daguerreotype will be discussed in a gallery talk at the Sackler.

Theater

www.americanrepertorytheater.org
617-547-8300

• Through February 7 
(see website for specific showtimes)

The six-hour ensemble production Gatz (divided in two by a dinner break) enacts every word of The Great Gatsby. Produced by Elevator Repair Service theater company of New York, and heralded as a radical commentary, Gatz is on tour for the first time. 

 

Exhibitions

Harvard Art Museum—Sackler
www.harvardartmuseum.org
617-495-9400; 485 Broadway

• January 10 at 2 p.m.

Daguerreotype Portraits, a gallery talk by Michelle Lamunière, Robinson assistant curator of photography, examines two newly acquired portraits of African Americans.  

• Continuing: Re-View. This survey of approximately 600 works from the Harvard Art Museum—the Fogg, the Busch-Reisinger, and the Arthur M. Sackler—is a unique installation of objects historically exhibited in separate facilities. 

 

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
www.peabody.harvard.edu 
617-496-1027

• Continuing: Sacred Spaces: Reflections on a Sufi Path. Mixed-media compositions record artist Samina Quraeshi’s pilgrimages to Sufi sanctuaries in the Indus Valley.

• Continuing: Wiyohpiyata: Lakota Images of the Contested West highlights drawings by Plains Indian warriors recovered from the Little Big Horn battlefield.

 

Harvard Museum of Natural History
www.hmnh.harvard.edu
617-495-3045

During its sesquicentennial, the museum is celebrating the newly renovated Great Mammal Hall, which fosters up-close experiences with wild animals—rare and common alike—from across the globe. 

• Opening January 22

Domesticated: Modern Dioramas of Our New Natural History. These large-scale photographs and scenes by New York City-based artist Amy Stein investigate the tenuous relationship between animals and humans as our built civilization increasingly encroaches upon nature. 

 

The Semitic Museum
www.fas.harvard.edu/~semitic
617-495-4631

Continuing: The Houses of Ancient Israel: Domestic, Royal, Divine features a full-scale replica of an Iron Age (ca. 1200-586 B.C.E.) village abode. Ancient Egypt: Magic and the Afterlife shows visitors the  Egyptian view of the hereafter.

 

Libraries 

www.hcl.harvard.edu/info/exhibitions


Houghton Library 
617-495-2439

• Continuing: Thomas Shotter Boys’s London As It Is, first published in 1842, is an artistic gem and important documentary of the Victorian-era city as seen through original sketches, lithographs, and hand-colored final images.

 

Pusey Library 
617-495-2417/384-7938

• Continuing: Roosevelt Reading: The Pigskin Library, 1909–1910, celebrates the centennial of TR’s post-presidential safari in British East Africa with his son, Kermit, by displaying the 55 pigskin-bound books taken to read during their journey. 

 

Cabot Library
617-496-5534

• Through January 29

Weather Control: Pluviculture, Cloud Seeding, and Climate Engineering looks at historic attempts to harness and direct the weather, from native rituals and nineteenth-century “rainmaking” to Cold War research and current investigations into climate engineering.

 

Countway Library Center for the History of Medicine
617-524-2170
www.countway.harvard.edu/chom

The Scalpel and the Pen: The Life and Work of Oliver Wendell Holmes, M.D., a year-long, wide-ranging exhibit, celebrates the bicentennial of the physician and author’s birth with photographs, rare early works, letters, anatomical specimens, and personal items, such as one of his famous chambered nautilus shells and an ivory paper knife, inscribed with a poem, given to Holmes by a colleague, physician and novelist S. Weir Mitchell. 

 

Nature and Science

The Arnold Arboretum
www.arboretum.harvard.edu
617-524-1718/384-5209 
Jamaica Plain, Boston

• January 24 and February 21 at 1 p.m.

Winter Wellness Walks led by docents offer beautiful scenery when the arboretum is pared down to its very bones—plus exercise and education on seasonal plants and winter habitats. The emphasis is on fitness, nurturing the spirit, and understanding how the natural world survives until spring. Meet at the Hunnewell Visitor Center; tea and hot chocolate conclude the tour. Free; no registration required.

 

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics  
www.cfa.harvard.edu/events
617-495-7461; 60 Garden Street

The center offers free observatory nights on the third Thursday of every month, with lectures followed by star-gazing— weather permitting. Doors open at 7 p.m. Check the website for specially scheduled Sci-fi Movie Nights, Star Parties, and the Kids Academy (for the younger set). 

 

Music

• February 19 at 8 p.m. 

www.harvardjazz.org; 617-496-2263
www.boxoffice.harvard.edu (for tickets)

The Harvard Club of Boston Jazz Combo Festival features student ensembles performing original compositions and standards, professional critiques, and cash awards. Free and open to the public at the Harvard club. www.harvardclub.com

 

Sanders Theatre
www.boxoffice.harvard.edu
617-496-2222

• January 16 at 7:30 p.m. 

A Joyful Noise Concert honors the legacy of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and features the Harlem Gospel Choir. Presented by the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center.

 

Events listings also appear in the University Gazette.

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