Harvard Museums

 

Harvard’s museums curate renowned collections, pioneer cutting-edge research, and offer educational experiences for everyone.     

                      

 

                                  

The Harvard Museums of Science & Culture offer captivating programming for all ages, permanent galleries, and dynamic rotating exhibits–from a 42-foot-long Kronosaurus to delicate Glass Flowers; from a massive Maya and Egyptian monuments  to instruments used by famous scientists and Nobel Prize winners. The HMSC museum partnership invites you to Harvard University's distinctive collections and vital research on human civilizations, biodiversity, and the history of Earth and science.

 

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography

Open: Monday – Sunday
Hours: 9:00 am – 5:00 pm

 

Peabody Museum of Ethnology and Archaeology

Explore Maya culture in the Latin American galleries. Discover the early days of American anthropology as shown in the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Experience Native American history and cultures through special exhibitions on Penobscot Canoes, Lakota Images of the Contested West, and the Indian College at colonial Harvard. Admission to the popular Harvard Museum of Natural History is included. The Peabody Museum was founded in 1866 by George Peabody and is one of the oldest museums in the world devoted to anthropology. The Museum has one of the most comprehensive collections of North American archaeology and ethnology in the world. From towering Native American totem poles and large Maya sculptures to precious artifacts of the ancient world, the Peabody Museum is among the oldest archaeological and ethnographic museums in the world with one of the finest collections of human cultural history found anywhere.

 

HARVARD MUSEUMS OF SCIENCE & CULTURE

Open: Sunday – Friday
Hours: 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
Closed: Saturdays

 

 
The museum explores the rich history of the Near Eastern cultures. Exhibitions include a full-scale replica of an ancient Iron Age home, life-sized casts of famous Mesopotamian monuments, authentic mummy coffins, interactive displays, and tablets containing the earliest forms of writing. Founded in 1889, the Harvard Semitic Museum houses more than 40,000 Near Eastern artifacts, mostly from museum-sponsored excavations in Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Tunisia. We use these collections to investigate and teach Near Eastern archaeology, history, and culture.
 

Harvard Museum of Natural History

Harvard Museum of Natural History

Open: Monday – Sunday
Hours: 9:00 am – 5:00 pm

 

Harvard Museum of Natural History

Visit the new exhibits Swimming with Sharks and In Search of Thoreau’s Flowers, as well as the popular Glass Flowers gallery. Find your birthstone gem in the newly renovated mineral gallery, and view dinosaur fossils in the paleontology gallery. Admission to the Peabody Museum at Harvard is included.  The Harvard Museum of Natural History was established in 1998 as the public face of three research museums: the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the Harvard University Herbaria, and the Mineralogical & Geological Museum. Presenting these incomparable collections and the research of scientists across the University, the Harvard Museum of Natural History’s mission is to enhance public understanding and appreciation of the natural world and the human place in it, sparking curiosity and a spirit of discovery in people of all ages.

 
 

Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments

Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments

 

Open: Sunday - Friday
Hours: 11:00 am - 4:00 pm
Close: Sundays

 

Collection of HIstorical Scientific Instruments

The core mission of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments is to preserve, document, and care for over 20,000 instruments portraying the history of science teaching and research at Harvard from the Colonial period to the 21st century. Through its lively exhibit and teaching programs, web presence, and increasing involvement in Critical Media Practices, the CHSI’s research activities and cultural initiatives intersect and bring together a multiplicity of academic disciplines and areas of professional museum expertise. The CHSI is both a specialized institution and an experimental space, where Harvard Faculty and students, instrument scholars and museum experts meet in the production of object-based knowledge.

Under the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture initiative, the CHSI is connected as well with the wider Harvard Community and the general public. Our ambition is to continue and enhance our participation with FAS museums in producing exhibits, lecture series, public events, and projects that clearly emphasize to a broad audience the interdisciplinary nature of the material culture of science and society.

 

 

                                        

Open: Tuesday - Sunday
Hours: 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Close: Mondays

 

Harvard Art Museums

The Harvard Art Museums—the Fogg Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum—advance knowledge about and appreciation of art and art museums. The museums are committed to preserving, documenting, presenting, interpreting, and strengthening the collections and resources in their care.The Harvard Art Museums bring to light the intrinsic power of art and promote critical looking and thinking for students, faculty, and the public. Through research, teaching, professional training, and public education, the museums encourage close study of original works of art, enhance access to the collections, support the production of original scholarship, and foster university-wide collaboration across disciplines.

 
 

Carpenter Center

24 Quincy StreetCambridge, MA 02138

Oppen: Tuesdays - Sundays
Hours: 12:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Close: Mondays

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts

Free and open to the public, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts is the center for contemporary art and artists at Harvard University. Through exhibitions, new commissions, public events, and publications the Carpenter Center is dedicated to artist-centered programming and to building a vibrant community around contemporary art. This community is defined by an ethos of experimentation, diverse perspectives, and making connections across disciplines and fields. Housed within Le Corbusier’s only building in North America, the Carpenter Center’s projects are enriched by the educational mission of the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, and the cultural resources of a large research university.

Generous support for Carpenter Center programs is provided by the Division of Arts and Humanities, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University; Teiger Foundation; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, Harvard University; and the Friends of the Carpenter Center: Lucy Baird, Dolly and Jack Geary, Abigail Ross Goodman and David Norr, John R. and Barbara Robinson, Kirstin Hill and Jonathan Schrag, and Margaret Wang.

metaLab

metaLAB

We are an idea foundry, knowledge-design lab, and production studio experimenting in the networked arts and humanities. 

Like all platforms for experimentation, metaLAB is less a destination than a perpetual work in progress. Rooted in the arts and humanities, straddling scholarly, critical, and creative practice, it is a community of scholars, designers, artists, makers, technologists, curators, and educators dedicated to modeling new forms of cultural communication, creative and critical practice, and knowledge production.

MetaLAB is an idea foundry in the sense that it is committed to ideation, debate, speculation, and theorization across the disciplinary grid.

MetaLAB is a knowledge design lab inasmuch as it consists of a portfolio of projects that translate ideas into practical expressions, from experimental books and pamphlets to museum installations to software platforms and data visualizations to participatory events.

MetaLAB is a production studio because it is committed to bringing together the mind and the hand, thinking and making. It tests out hypotheses and ideas by developing and delivering a wide array of outputs including database documentaries, software platforms, artworks, exhibitions, studio courses and workshops, data visualizations, and curatorial projects.

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102 Mt Auburn St, Cambridge, MA 02138

Close until November 2023.

The Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art

The Hutchins Center for African & African American Research supports research on the history and culture of people of African descent the world over and provides a forum for collaboration and the ongoing exchange of ideas. It seeks to stimulate scholarly engagement in African and African American studies both at Harvard and beyond, and to increase public awareness and understanding of this vital field of study. As the preeminent research center in the field, the Hutchins Center sponsors visiting fellows, art exhibitions, publications, research projects, archives, readings, conferences, and new media initiatives that respond to and excite interest in established and emerging channels of inquiry in African and African American research. 

 

 

 

University Disability Resources 

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UDR is available to consult with community members related to best practices for accessibility and inclusion of persons with disabilities. Consultation may be initiated by a phone call (617.495.1859 or TTY 617.496.0466), or email to disabilityresources@harvard.edu. Examples of topics community members may wish to consult on:  

  • Resources available to students and employees with disabilities  
  • Accommodations statements for programs, events, and applications 
  • Responding to student, employee, and/or visitor reasonable accommodation requests  
  • Best practices for running inclusive and accessible programs 
  • When and how to provide captioning and/or audio descriptions for video or online content 
  • How to run accessible in-person, remote, or hybrid events 
  • Assessing physical accessibility of spaces used for programs and activities 
  • Access for service animals in campus spaces 
  • Effective communication with community members who are deaf or hard of hearing