Synthesizing art, design & education - at Harvard

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The Carpenter Center for the Visual Artsat Harvard University is launching a new programme of exhibitions and public activity under the leadership of James Voorhies, the recently appointed John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director. This new programme will be dedicated to synthesizing art, design, and education through the exhibition of existing works and production of new commissions. Choreographing exhibitions, lectures, residencies, publications, performances, screenings and informal gatherings, CCVA will strive to bring people, ideas, and objects together in generative ways that provide unparalleled experiences with contemporary art.

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts is the only building in North America designed by Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier. In addition to a site for exhibition and public events, CCVA is home to the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies and Harvard Film Archive. This is envisioned as a place where visual literacy, knowledge production, contemporary art, and critical inquiry seamlessly meet, ultimately enriching the creative and intellectual lives of audiences.

The artist Martin Beck, based in New York and Vienna, inaugurates an initiative called Institution (Building). His exhibition, ‘Program’ is manifested through a sequence of interventions, installations, events, and publications that draw upon the exhibition histories and academic pursuits of the Carpenter Center and Department of Visual and Environmental Studies. This sequence – each node of which Beck considers an episode –lends particular attention to the founding programme of CCVA. Institution (Building) is a new biennial invitation to artists to consider the institutional behaviours and practices of the Carpenter Center and Harvard University. In repeated visits over the course of two years, artists will engage through an expanded form of exhibition with the archive, architecture, and history of CCVA.

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts

24 Quincy Street

Cambridge,
MA 02138


617.495.5666