Page 116 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide 2017 - Boston

114  BOST ON AREA B Y AREA

Harvard University Museums world. Keep an eye out for
stunning 12th-century capitals
Harvard’s museums were originally conceived to revolutionize from Moutiers St-Jean in
the process of education; students were to be taught by Burgundy, France.
allowing them access to artifacts from around the world. Today, Aficionados revel in the
Fogg’s extensive collection,
this tradition continues, with the museums housing some of some of which prefigure the
the world’s finest university collections: art from Europe and Italian Renaissance. The
America in the Fogg, Sackler, and Busch-Reisinger Museums; massive altarpieces and
archaeo logical finds in the Peabody Museum; Asian, Islamic suspended crucifix are
and Indian art in the Sackler Museum, and a vast collection particularly impressive.
of artifacts in the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Highlights include galleries
devoted to 17th-century
Dutch, Flemish, French, and
Italian paintings, including
four studies for Francesco
Trevisiani’s Massacre of the
Innocents, a masterpiece
destroyed in Dresden during
World War II. Art students
carefully examine Gian
Lorenzo Bernini’s use of clay
models for his large-scale
marble and bronze sculpture.
The museum also features
several works that examine
the emergence of landscape
Exterior view of the renovated Harvard Art Museums as a subject in French
19th-century painting.
Harvard Art Museums Art Museum was created in To many observers, one of
32 Quincy St. Tel (617) 495-9400. 1895 when Harvard began to the Fogg’s most outstanding
Open 10am–5pm daily. & 7 8 build its own art collection in features is the Maurice
∑ artmuseums.harvard.edu order to teach art history more Wertheim collection of
Formerly housed in separate effectively. Both the Fogg and Impressionist and Post-
buildings, the Fogg, Busch- the Busch-Reisinger have Impressionist art, most of
Reisinger, and Arthur Sackler select collections of art from it collected in the late 1930s.
Museums now occupy a single Europe and America. With a number of important
expanded facility designed The collections, which focus paintings by Renoir, Manet, and
by renowned Italian architect, on Western art from the late Degas, the Wertheim gallery
Renzo Piano. Middle Ages to the present, is the Fogg’s most popular.
The stunning, eco-friendly are among the most lauded Also of note is the Grenville
complex was designed to to be found on a university L. Winthrop Collection, which
provide greater access to campus anywhere in the was donated to Harvard in
the museums’ collections. 1943 and includes more than
New resources have been 4,000 items. Visitors and
created for study, teaching, students carefully study
conser vation, and exhibition. paintings, sculpture, and
The heart of the facility is the drawings by some of the most
Calderwood Courtyard, from important names of the 19th
which the guests can access century such as William Blake,
the various collections. The Jacques-Louis David, Honoré
space has been modeled after Daumier, Winslow Homer,
the façade of the 15th-century Auguste Rodin, John Singer
Church of San Biagio in Sargent, Henri de Toulouse-
Montepulciano, Italy. It is open Lautrec, and James Abbott
to the public free of charge, McNeill Whistler.
as are the adjoining museum Surprises lurk in a gallery
shop and cafe. of art made in France 1885–
Harvard’s strong relationship 1960, often by expatriate
with the arts dates back to artists. Edvard Munch’s 1891
1874, when the school painting of Rue de Rivoli, for
appointed Charles Eliot Norton example, is both bright and
as the first professor of art Light-Space Modulator (1923–30) by the impressionistic, in contrast
history in America. The Fogg Hungarian Moholy-Nagy with his bleak Expressionism.

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Eyewitness Travel LAYERS PRINTED:
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Date 1st October 2013
Size 125mm x 217mm