Harvard Art Museums Archives & Special Collections
The official archives of the Harvard Art Museums: Fogg Art Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, and Busch-Reisinger Museum.
Library Tools & Services
Contact Information
About
Collections
Library Services
Library Staff
Visitor Policies
News & Events
- Reference:
- (617) 495-2384
- To schedule an appointment (required):
- (617) 495-2384
Available for research by appointment, Archives & Special Collections collects, organizes, and preserves the institution’s historical documents and makes them available to students, scholars, and interested members of the international art community. Its mission is to document and promote knowledge and appreciation of the Art Museums’ history, programs, and goals, and the professional and personal accomplishments of its principals. Archival materials, crucial to the Art Museums’ institutional memory, mandate, and mission, supply a vital complementary narrative to the works of art themselves, recording their acquisition, history, and use. Holdings include significant papers of individuals and groups associated with the Art Museums’ history, as well as comprehensive materials on the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Arthur M. Sackler museums, which integrated to form the Harvard Art Museums in 1983.
Wi-Fi
Copiers
Available for research by appointment, Archives & Special Collections collects, organizes, and preserves the institution’s historical documents and makes them available to students, scholars, and interested members of the international art community. Its mission is to document and promote knowledge and appreciation of the Art Museums’ history, programs, and goals, and the professional and personal accomplishments of its principals. Archival materials, crucial to the Art Museums’ institutional memory, mandate, and mission, supply a vital complementary narrative to the works of art themselves, recording their acquisition, history, and use. Holdings include significant papers of individuals and groups associated with the Art Museums’ history, as well as comprehensive materials on the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Arthur M. Sackler museums, which integrated to form the Harvard Art Museums in 1983.
- Wi-Fi
- Copiers
Archives
Official records of the Harvard Art Museums. Includes the correspondence of former directors, curators and other staff members, notably Edward W. Forbes, Paul Sachs, Agnes Mongan, Charles H. Moore and John Coolidge. Also material on the history of the Fogg, records of past exhibitions, building plans, photographs, scrapbooks and memorabilia. Collections of personal papers include: Agnes Mongan, David Smith, Chaim Soutine, Denman W. Ross, Grenville L. Winthrop, Alfonso Ossorio and many student papers, and the records of the Howard Wise Gallery. Published materials include Fogg annual reports and exhibition catalogs and curatorial publications relating to Museum collections.
Busch-Reisinger Museum
Collection includes Bauhaus materials; visual materials by/from Walter Gropius and of Lyonel Feininger; papers of Alexander Dorner. The Bauhaus materials are comprised of student notes and exercises, textile and wallpaper samples, photographs, books, and Bauhaus publications from 1919-33; also student exercises from other art schools founded on the Bauhaus model. The Walter Gropius Archive contains architectural drawings, blueprints, and photographs of German and American projects, 1910-56. The Lyonel Feininger Archive includes 5,000 cataloged items: sketches, some correspondence, unfinished oil paintings, and photographs. The Alexander Dorner Papers consist of 18 boxes of correspondence, book and article typescripts, as well as newspaper and magazine clippings on a wide variety of cultural, social, and scientific topics.
Department of Photographs
Founded in 1972, the Fogg’s photograph collection is comprised of an anthology collection representing the history of fine art photography as well as the aesthetic use of photography largely in the United States and Western Europe from 1839 to the present, with special emphasis on modern and contemporary photography. It also holds six research collections that focus on American documentary, social reform, vernacular, and professional photography: Ben Shahn; Cartes-de-visite and cabinet cards; Tintypes; American Professional Photographers Collection; Social Museum Collection; and the Boston Elevated Railway Collection.
Harvard Portrait Collection
The Portrait Collection consists primarily of portraits of people associated with Harvard University: presidents, deans, administrators, faculty, benefactors and illustrious alumni. From this small group the collection has grown, through gifts as well as commissions, to include more than 2,000 paintings and sculptures. The collection has particular strengths in American colonial painting, and nineteenth century American sculpture. Documentation for the University's portrait collection: curatorial files for over 2,000 paintings, sculpture and drawings; accession books. Files includes photographs, acquisition information, notes and references from Corporation records related to specific portraits, original correspondence (primarily concerning commissions or gifts; letters from artists, donors), bibliography, exhibition history and conservation history.
Archaeological Exploration of Sardis
The Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, sponsored by the Harvard Art Museums and Cornell University, has been excavating at Sardis since 1958. The site has yielded artifacts from the Lydian, Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, and other cultures. During the past 50 years more than 14,000 objects have been inventoried and many thousands more have been saved for future study.
Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies
The Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies provides analysis and treatments for the Harvard Art Museums’ more than 250,000 objects in all media, ranging in date from antiquity to the present, from Europe, North and South America, North Africa, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, and East Asia.
- Online Guides and Catalogs
Some records are cataloged in HOLLIS . Some records are cataloged in OASIS. Over 250,000 works of art are cataloged in VIA and are also included in the Harvard Art Museums' Collection Search (http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collection).
- Photographic Reproduction
Photocopying by staff only.
- Access
Open to all, by appointment only. Researchers must contact the Archives as far in advance of a visit as possible; a minimum of three weeks is requested. Appropriate identification required. To request an appointment, please contact the Archives at am_reference@harvard.edu.
Archives/Manuscripts
Winston Churchill’s Visit to the Fogg Museum
On September 6, 1943, in the later years of World War II, Harvard hosted a vital American ally: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
Archives/Manuscripts
Painterly Penmanship: A Letter from Georgia O’Keeffe, 1938
In a recent visit to our Archives, we happened upon this beautifully handwritten letter from Georgia O’Keeffe to Edward Forbes, the Fogg Museum’s former director.
Archives/Manuscripts
Security with a Bite
Before hi-tech security systems were available, guard dogs were standard employees of places like the Harvard Art Museums.
Archives/Manuscripts
60th Anniversary of Legendary Dylan Thomas Reading at the Fogg Museum
On a Sunday evening, on May 3, 1953, Dylan Thomas stood in front of a teeming crowd at the Fogg Museum’s Norton Lecture Hall, reading from his unfinished play Under Milk Wood.
Archives/Manuscripts
Art Museums Archives Catalogs Key Collections
Last month, the Archives announced the completion of a project to catalog items from its collection, which also include documents concerning the early development of the Harvard Art Museums and letters from T.S. Eliot and Georgia O’Keeffe.
