“From ancient artifacts to contemporary artworks”

Harvard Art Museums and galleries house astonishing collections of art from many well known masters. I had a pleasure to visit and spent almost two hours making my way through this beautiful space just last week. What impressed me apart from the diverse art collection is the bright and large inner courtyard called the Calderwood. Centered in the heart of the museums, this gloriously restored interior space serves as the central point of circulation where there are several metal table guests can sit and relax while looking above to the dramatic glass roof designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop enables controlled natural light to illuminate the upper levels of the facility and ﬁlter into the courtyard below, which is especially stunning at dusk.

When you walk into the renowned Harvard Art Museums, you’re technically stepping into three museums at once: The Fogg Museum showcases Western art from the Middle Ages to the present day; the Busch-Reisinger Museum focuses on on all modes and periods of art from northern and central Europe, with an emphasis on German-speaking countries; and the Arthur M. Sackler museum features a collection of Asian, Islamic, and later Indian art. Once housed separately, the museums now peacefully coexist in the Fogg Museum building, which made its expanded and modernized debut in 2014, redesigned by Renzo Piano. Behind the beautiful brick facade, dating to 1927, the museums cluster around a historic atrium, now topped with a Piano-conceived pyramidal glass ceiling. The Italian architect’s impressive work for the institution re-endows it with a sense of the breadth and depth of the university’s footprint in the art world.

— Condé Nast Traveler

“A mysterious greatness emanates from this group.
One doesn’t dare assign a meaning to it.
A heaven is near, but is not yet attained;
a hell is near, and not yet forgotten.”

As I walked farther inside the space, I found one dimly lit room filled with great number of paintings that immediately caught my attention. Right in the center of the room sit an exquisite white marble statue, Eternal Idol by Auguste Rodin. The sculpture was completed around 1889 signifies Rodin's reverence for the female body, in which the restrained male, with arms behind his back kneels before the woman kissing her tenderly below her left breast, over the heart.

It is not only this room, but many other rooms and art pieces that inspired me immensely. I highly recommend you to find some time to check this beautiful space out!