Upcoming Events

AKPIA Lecture Series — Fatima Quraishi "Palimpsests Past and Present: The Sufis and Sultans of the Maklī Necropolis, 1380–1660"

October 15, 2026

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6:00PM - 7:30PM EDT

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HAA, Room 422

In Person

Palimpsests Past and Present: The Sufis and Sultans of the Maklī Necropolis, 1380–1660 Established as a small hermitage in the late fourteenth century, the Makli necropolis, in what is now Sindh province, Pakistan, grew over three centuries to a site of...

Medieval Studies Lecture — Krisztina Ilko "Bringing Medieval Lordship into Play: The Symbolic and Material Values of Chess Sets as Votive Offerings, c. 900–1350"

October 19, 2026

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5:00PM - 6:30PM EDT

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HAA Lower Lecture Hall

In Person

The game of chess has long been seen primarily as a popular form of entertainment for medieval knights. Instead, this talk shifts the attention from gaming to utilising chess sets as votive offerings. It will reconstruct the little-known yet widespread...

University of Oxford | Cognitive Art History as New Humanities: How to Capture a Painter’s Brain?

October 28, 2026

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5:00PM EDT

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University of Oxford: Oakeshott Room, Lincoln College

In Person

It is rare for an artist to paint her own brain. Yet Irene Chou (1924–2011), a leading Hong Kong ink painter, did just that. When confronted with the X-ray that confirmed her diagnosis of cerebellar atrophy, Chou saw her life inscribed within it: “I saw...

AKPIA Lecture Series — Heba Mostafa "High Stakes, Big Data: The Existential Entanglements of the Abbasid Nilometer in Cairo"

October 29, 2026

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6:00PM - 7:30PM EDT

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HAA, Room 422

In Person

High Stakes, Big Data: The Existential Entanglements of the Abbasid Nilometer in Cairo More information forthcoming... Heba Mostafa Associate Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture, Department of Art History, St. George, University of Toronto

CAMLab Frontiers Exhibition — Measuring the Cosmos: From Mandala to Latent Space

Nov. 5 - Nov 23, 2026

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All day

In Person

Measurement is never neutral. From the ninth-century stupa at Borobudur to the AI latent space, this exhibition traces a single idea across a thousand years: to measure a world is to generate one. Bringing together pre-modern cosmological instruments and...

CAMLab: RPM Festival

Nov. 6 - Nov 7, 2026

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All day

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Harvard CAMLab

In Person

Revolutions per Minute Festival, an artist-run festival, is dedicated to short-form poetic, personal, cinematic work in experiments, essay film, animation, documentary, video, and audiovisual performance. RPM Festival participates in the Mass Cultural...

University of Rochester: "Honor and Risk: Recovering Afro-Atlantic Power and Its Objects from the Archives of Enslavement"

November 10, 2026

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5:00PM EST

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Rush Rhees Library, Humanities Center Conference Room D

In Person

Cécile Fromont – Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University In the first half of the eighteenth century, African men and women enslaved or free, living in plantations or cities around the Atlantic, created empowered packets that...

Mahindra Lecture: Kristel Smentek "Framed: Pictures from Asia in Eighteenth-Century Europe"

November 17, 2026

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5:30PM - 7:00PM EST

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HAA, Room 422

In Person

More information forthcoming Title: Framed: Pictures from Asia in Eighteenth-Century Europe Speaker: Kristel Smentek (MIT) Chair: Ewa Lajer-Burcharth Date: Tuesday, November 17th, 2026. Time: 5:30pm, reception to follow at 7pm Room: 485 Broadway Room 422

AKPIA Lecture Series — Sahar Hosseini "Entangled with the River: The Making of Safavid Isfahan from Watershed to Body"

November 19, 2026

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6:00PM - 7:30PM EST

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HAA, Room 422

In Person

Entangled with the River: The Making of Safavid Isfahan from Watershed to Body Information forthcoming... Sahar Hosseini Assistant Professor, Department of History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh

Zerner Lecture — Stephan Wolohojian: Four Paintings, Four Stories, Four Uncharted Points in the History of European Painting

December 1, 2026

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6:00PM - 7:30PM EST

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HAA Lower Lecture Hall

In Person

Museums acquire works of art not only to expand and strengthen their collections, but also to reshape the narratives those collections make possible. The greatest excitement come with the acquisition of previously unknown or unpublished works, whose...

Ancient Studies Spring Visitor Lecture - Jas Elsner (Oxford)

March 25, 2027

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5:15PM - 7:15PM EDT

In Person

TBD Part of the Ancient Studies at Harvard Visitors Series Details to follow.

Ancient Studies Spring Visitor Master Class - Jas Elsner (Oxford)

March 26, 2027

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12:00PM - 2:00PM EDT

In Person

TBD Ancient Studies at Harvard Visitors Series Details to follow.