University-Wide Task Force to Explore Role of Arts at Harvard
Two short weeks after her inauguration as Harvard’s 26th President, Drew Gilpin Faust announced the appointment of a task force to examine the place of the arts across Harvard’s schools. The arts task force will conduct the first University-wide assessment of the arts at Harvard since the 1956 Brown Report, which led to the creation of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies and the construction of the Loeb Drama Center.
“I am very excited about this undertaking,”says Faust. “Harvard has always had enormous strengths in the arts— and never more so than today—but we have had equallystrong ambivalence about the role of performance and practice in the curriculum and in the life of the University.”
The committee began its deliberations in November with an eye toward issuing recommendations in the fall of 2008. Chaired by Cogan University Professor Stephen Greenblatt, the task force draws its membership from faculty, students, and others across the University who represent many fields and modes of engagement with the study and practice of the arts. Included on the committee are representatives from the American Repertory Theatre, the Office for the Arts at Harvard, the Harvard University Arts Museums, the Radcliffe Institute, the Graduate Schools of Design, Education and Government, and many arts-oriented academic departments, as well as other academic areas not specifically tied to the arts.
The task force is charged with examining the role of the arts in a research university, in a liberal arts education, and at Harvard specifically. It will explore the role of arts both within and beyond the curriculum, as well as how Harvard can encourage connections between arts activities and science, technology, humanities, and other related fields. The committee is asked to consider as well how other parts of the University, such as the American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.), the museums, and the Graduate School of Design (GSD) can be more fully integrated into a vibrant arts culture at Harvard. As it charts answers to these broad questions, the committee is also asked to consider what administrative, financial, and physical structures will be needed to advance the goals identified.
“This is a period of significant transformation at the University,” says Greenblatt, “with a new president, new deans of the FAS [Faculty of Arts and Sciences] and GSD, as well as both a new undergraduate curriculum and a new campus taking shape in Allston. At this crucial moment of institutional renewal, we have an historic opportunity to consider what place the arts will hold in the Harvard of the 21st century.”
In framing the charge to the task force, Faust explained how Harvard confronts an ever-increasing demand for opportunities for artistic expression both within and beyond the curriculum. A significant place for the arts is anticipated as part of the University’s growth in Allston.
“Yet Harvard has not, in many years, thought comprehensively about its relationship to the arts,” says Faust. “Our extraordinary strengths in the arts remain fragmented, less well-understood, less well-supported, and less integrated than their importance warrants.
“The arts play a central role in the lives of so many students and faculty at Harvard, yet their role in the life of the University remains uncertain and undefined. I hope that thistask force will attempt such a definition.”
She cites the abundance of the arts at Harvard—in nearly 150 undergraduate student organizations, in countless instrumental and choral groups, in the collections of Harvard’s museums, in studios in the Carpenter Center and the Department of VES [Visual and Environmental Studies], in the Harvard Film Archive, at the A.R.T., in the Office for the Arts, in the New College Theatre, in the fellowship program at Radcliffe, in poetry and creative writing classes in the Department of English, in the teaching and scholarship of the Graduate School of Design, in the lives of faculty, students, and staff.
In addition to Greenblatt, the task force will include students and faculty from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Graduate School of Education, Kennedy School of Government, and Graduate School of Design, as well as from various arts institutions on campus.
“I am delighted that this task force will provide a University-wide perspective in a domain that is so directly pertinent to the work of FAS.,” says Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael D. Smith.
In forming its inquiry and recommendations, the committee is asked to consider Harvard’s past considerations of these issues, including the report of the Brown Committee in 1956, as well as the experience and programs of other colleges and universities, including not only our peer institutions, but also institutions that host innovative and distinctive arts programming. The president has asked the committee to consult broadly, soliciting thoughts and ideas from students, faculty, and others on campus, as well as from the large external network of Harvard alumni and others who are involved in the arts. The task force welcomes communications.
The members of the task force are:
Stephen Greenblatt, chair, Cogan University Professor
Homi Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, director of the Humanities Center, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Melissa Franklin, Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Peter Galison, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor, director of the Collection of the Historical Scientific Instruments
Jorie Graham, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Alfred Guzzetti, Osgood Hooker Professor of Visual Arts, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Madelyn Ho ’08, chemical and physical biology, recipient of Harvard Artist Development Fellowship in Dance, Harvard College
John Kelly, 2004-2005 Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Joseph Koerner, professor of history of art and architecture, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Emily Hargroves Fisher Professor of Education, Graduate School of Education
Jack Megan, director, Office for the Arts, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Helen Mirra, assistant professor of visual and environmental studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Helen Molesworth, Maisie K. and James R. Houghton Curator of Contemporary Art, Harvard University Art Museums
Ingrid Monson, Quincy Jones Professor of African-American Music, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Mohsen Mostafavi, dean, Graduate School of Design (January 2008)
Dan Pecci ’09, English and American literature and language, secondary field in drama, recipient of 2006 Phyllis Anderson Prize in Playwriting, Harvard College
Hashim Sarkis, Aga Khan Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism in Muslim Societies, Graduate School of Design
Diana Sorensen, James F. Rothenberg Professor of Romance Languages & Literatures and of Comparative Literature, dean for the Humanities, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Marcus Stern, associate director, lecturer on dramatic arts, American Repertory Theatre and the A.R.T./ MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training
Damian Woetzel M.P.A. 2007, principal dancer, New York City
