Harvard Art MuseumsHarvard Square, Cambridge
Introduction to the History of Art
A University Teaching Gallery installation asking what art is, why it matters, and by whom its history is written — objects chosen to be studied by Harvard students and open to all.
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Around 250 CE, a painter in Egypt mixed pigment with beeswax and laid a man's face onto a board cut to sit over his mummy. The same gallery holds Dorian Gray, a 2001 panel by Martin Kline over 1.5 metres tall, made with that wax technique. You get encaustic painting 1,750 years apart in one room.
The 42 objects were picked for Harvard's intro survey course, History of Art and Architecture 10, and the gallery is rehung each semester for a new course. The spread is wide: gold Byzantine coins stamped with Christ's face, a run of Dürer prints, Adam and Eve three times from 1504 to 1917, four Peruvian portraits of Inca rulers and Pizarro. It's Harvard's intro art history course without the application essay.
It's a course's worth of examples rather than one story, so it suits close lookers: Sebald Beham's Eve is under 7 cm tall. Entry is free, Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm, until 3 January 2027.
Look for
Mummy portrait of a man (mid-3rd century CE)
A man's face painted in pigment mixed with beeswax on lime wood, the board cut irregularly so it could be wrapped in place over the mummy's face.
Dürer's Rhinoceros (1515)
The woodcut rhinoceros, about 30 cm wide, with the date 1515, the word RHINOCERVS and Dürer's monogram printed at the upper right.
Justinian II's gold coins
Look at Christ on the front: on coins from the emperor's first reign (692 to 695) he has long hair and a full beard, on those from 705 to 711 curly hair and a close beard.
Four portraits from Peru (after 1837)
Oil portraits of Manco Cápac, Túpac Inca Yupanqui, Atahualpa and the conquistador Francisco Pizarro, with MANCO CCAPAC INCA I.o lettered along the bottom of the first.
Muybridge's Jockey Riding (1887)
A plate from Animal Locomotion that breaks one ride into 16 small numbered frames.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Nerding Out
- Rainy Days
Skip if
You want one big themed show: this is 42 objects picked to teach an intro survey course.
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Image credits
5
- From Iran: A Visual TestimonyAzadeh Akhlaghi, via Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology
- Harvard Art Museumsajay_suresh via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
- Carpenter Center for the Visual ArtsBobak Ha'Eri via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
- Peabody Museum of Archaeology & EthnologyDaderot, via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- Harvard Museum of Natural Historyajay_suresh via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0