Ewa Lajer-Burcharth

Wednesday - 10:30am - 1:15pm

A team-taught course led by the DGS based on exemplary readings designed to introduce students to a wide range of art-historical methods.

Yukio Lippit

Thursday - 3:00pm - 5:45pm

This course explores the golden age of Japanese Buddhist sculpture from the seventh through thirteenth century. Each week focuses on one famous work in terms of style, iconography, technique, materials, sculptor, patronage, and ritual. Special emphasis will be placed upon the relationship of the sculpture to its temple setting, inclusive of mural décor, other sculptures in the ensemble, the mandorla, dais, and canopy. Similarly, the recent discoveries of conservation science will be debated, as well as the significance of...

Joseph Koerner

Tuesday - 12:00pm - 2:45pm

Explores landscape drawing as a specialized genre of art production in seventeenth-century Holland, and considers its historical origins, its practical and wider cultural functions, and its historical afterlife. Special emphasis will be placed on depiction of relations between land and sea, and how such relations might re-thought in light of current ecological crises. Classes are held in the Harvard Art Museums and focused on holdings of the collection, including new acquisitions that are to be featured in a forthcoming...

Narayan Khandekar

Wednesday, 3:00pm - 5:45pm

This course leads students through the examination of a work of art from the collection of Harvard Art Museums using the perspectives of a curator, conservator and a conservation scientist. Students will examine and interrogate a work using these different perspectives to understand how and from what the object is made and how it has changed since its creation using visual and instrumental techniques. The course will conclude with a presentation of a forgery/attribution/authentication case by individuals. The course will...

Andrew Plumb

Monday, 9:00am - 10:00am; Friday, 3:00pm - 5:45pm

Tectonics Lab introduces students to the roles that materials and their disposition play in the production of meaningful architectural experience. We explore material properties and expand upon traditional definitions to include a critique of the ecological, social and cultural impact of their production and end use. We will consider materials through the lense of Good, Clean and Fair. Terms that are borrowed from the slow movement and which are conspicuously absent from the discipline and practice of...

Melissa M. McCormick

Wednesday, 3:00pm - 5:45pm

This undergraduate seminar examines the history, culture, and practice of the Japanese tea ceremony (chanoyu) and its reception in the United States. What began as a ritualized preparation of tea, by the medieval period had developed into a wide-ranging cultural practice the study of which opens onto issues of Japanese aesthetics, political history, and philosophy. Common perceptions of chanoyu today, however, are often filtered through the lens of its first systematic presentation in the...

Gulru Necipoglu-Kafadar

Thursday, 12:00pm - 2:45pm

Between the 16th and 18th centuries, three empires - the Mediterranean-based Ottomans, Safavids in Iran, and Mughals in the Indian subcontinent - developed interconnected yet distinctive architectural, material and visual cultures with individualized ornamental idioms by fusing their common transregional Timurid heritage with local traditions. The course explores connections between empire building, iconic monuments, and garden landscapes with respect to design, materiality, aesthetics, religion, imperial identity,...