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Harvard Film Archive  Past Exhibits |
Exhibitions
The title-page from Joannes
de Laet's, Persia, seu Regni
persici status (Leiden, 1633),
call no. H 32.1.103.3*
From Rhubarb to Rubies: European Travels to Safavid Iran, 1550-1700
The exhibition will examine European travels to Iran in the Early Modern period and draw attention to the long tradition of cultural and scientific exchange between Iran and the West, one that has been obscured over the ages. Houghton Library’s rich collection of Early Modern books, maps, prints, and miniatures will illustrate the reasons why the travelers went to Iran, what they brought home from their visit, and how they shared their impressions and experiences with their friends, colleagues, patrons and the wider public at home. In addition, the exhibition will include selected instruments, plants, animals, and minerals from other Harvard collections: Arthur M. Sackler Museum (Islamic and Later Indian Art; Ancient & Byzantine Art and Numismatics), Fogg Art Museum (Agnes Mongan Center), Harvard Museum of Natural History (Harvard University Herbaria, the Museum for Comparative Zoology, the Mineralogical and Geological Museum), and Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments.
Edison and Newman Room, Houghton Library
Hours
For details contact Peter Accardo at 617-496-4027
The Lands of the Sophi: Iran in Early Modern European Maps (1550-1700)
The exhibit focuses on images of Iran in European maps in the 16th and 17th centuries. It includes a Ptolemaic regional map, Gastaldi’s territorial maps of Asia, and 17th and early 18th-century Dutch, French, and German continental and regional maps. It highlights their cultural interdependence with ancient classical, medieval and Early Modern Oriental, and Early Modern European concepts of geography, mapmaking, and political theory.
European maps from the Middle Ages to modernity have portrayed Iran in a variety of ways: as an amorphous region without borders; as a region defined on the basis of ancient Greek historical and geographical writings with artificial, straight-edged boundaries; as a region defined by the ruling contemporary dynasty, described with names found in Oriental sources, and demarcated by limits set by its three major neighbors; as a region identified via Iranian historical literature, measured and named by European explorers and students of Western and Oriental maps and books, with vague borders except for periods of war. While most of these types of cartographic portraits of Iran did not exist in pure form, their basic qualities are clearly discernible.
These observations suggest that the creation of knowledge about Iran among European geographers and cartographers was by no means a linear, cumulative process of gathering one piece of knowledge after the other, but a process that is better described by discontinuity and incommensurability.
Map Gallery Hall, Pusey Library
Hours
For details contact Joseph Garver at 617-495-2417 or via e-mail
Bristol: The Glad Hand, Verdict,
April 16, 1900, Senator Thomas
Platt, state Republican Party boss,
and Governor Roosevelt before
the Republican National Convention
Theodore Roosevelt Collection,
Harvard College Library
T.R. in Cartoon: The Verdict, 1898–1900
The Verdict was a Democratic weekly of cartoons and comment, published in New York City during the period coinciding with Theodore Roosevelt's Republican governorship of New York State.
Theodore Roosevelt Gallery, Pusey Library
Monday–Friday, 9 am–4:45 pm
For details contact Wallace Dailey at 617-384-7938
2007-08 Winners of the Visiting Committee Prize for Undergraduate Book Collecting and The Philip Hofer Prize for Art and Book Collecting
The Francophone Collection, Finding P.G. Wodehouse: Catalytic Legacies of My Grandfather's India, Representative Works in Science and the History of Science, The Art of War in Revolutionary America, and Figbash and Wild Things: The Illustrations of Edward St. John Gorey and Maurice Sendak. Samplings of the collections of these prize-winning entries, along with personal commentary, are on exhibit.
Lamont Library Exhibition Cases, Second and third floors
Hours
For details call Lynn Sayers at 617-495-2455
From The Hidden Canyon: A River
Journey by John Blaustein
(Chronicle
Books, San Francisco, 1999)
July 18 – October 10
Sublime Spectacle: Exploration and Geology in the Grand Canyon
While it can be appreciated solely for its natural beauty, the Grand Canyon is also one of the best places on earth to see a record of the earth’s geological past. This exhibit shows what the canyon consists of and how it was formed, and also discusses the exploration of the canyon by scientists in the 19th century. Clarence Dutton’s 1882 Atlas to Accompany the Tertiary History of the Grand Cañon District, one of the most beautiful works on the canyon, will be on display.
Cabot Science Library Exhibition Case, main floor
Hours
For details contact Reed Lowrie at 617-496-5534
Continuing Exhibitions
Mercator Globes
Exhibition includes Gerard Mercator's terrestrial (1541) and celestial (1551) globes that reflect new discoveries in world geography and cosmography as well as new techniques in charting, printing, and globe making. Only 22 matched pairs survive, Harvard's being the only matched pair in America.
Mercator Case, Map Gallery Hall
Hours
For details call the Map Collection at 617-495-2417
Lectures
Please check back for the fall 2008 lecture schedule.
Chamber Music at Houghton Library
The spring 2008 season has ended. Please check back for the fall 2008 schedule.
All programs are tentative and subject to change.
All concerts are held in the Edison and Newman Room, Houghton Library.
For further information, please contact the Harvard Theatre Collection,
by telephone at 617-495-2445 or by e-mail at htc@harvard.edu.
Films
The Harvard Film Archive offers an ongoing public film program. For details see the Monthly Calendar available on the HFA Web site.
