Teaching and Collaborating at Harvard Art Museums with Terra Collection-in-Residence

The Terra Collection-in-Residence program lends paintings from the Terra Foundation’s collection to academic museums in the United States and international museums with strong connections to universities for a period of two to four years, accompanied by a grant that can be used for the care and interpretation of the objects. At Harvard Art Museums, the Terra Collection-in-Residence loan, which began in December 2022 and is active through December 2026, is of four paintings and five works on paper, all chosen because each offers unique opportunities to explore curatorial practices and augment Harvard’s in-gallery teaching program.

Horace D. Ballard, Theodore E. Stebbins Associate Curator of American Art at Harvard Art Museums, worked with his colleagues to choose paintings from the Terra Foundation’s collections. One core reason guiding the selection was the works’ suitability for teaching in the galleries. Currently installed outside of the American and European collections at the Harvard Art Museums, Samuel Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre (1831–33) helps visitors explore stories of American artists who traveled to Europe in the nineteenth century to seek out models for their own learning and artistic formation. Horace D. Ballard is the source of all subsequent quotations in this text.

“Morse’s painting […] was planned out and produced in the decade (1825–1835) when citizens of the United States were celebrating the first half-century of the nation. The painting indicates a new understanding about the relationship between the U.S. and Europe, as some Americans began to see their country as the heir-apparent to Greco-Roman ideals, while others, notably those in the growing abolitionist and temperance movements, began to see the young nation as an inheritor of the worst vices of empire. The painting encourages us to ask, ‘Who are our appropriate models?’ and ‘What form does beauty take?’”

In May 2023, Kelli Morgan, previously Professor of Curatorial Studies, History of Art and Architecture, and Director of Curatorial Studies at Tufts University, gave a gallery talk in front of Morse’s painting and asked the audience what they noticed. One person observed that there are more women than men in the painting, and the conversation turned to contemporary artists like the Guerilla Girls as well as women taking the Grand Tour through continental Europe in the nineteenth century.

As a teaching method, close looking at an object often reveals a much richer story than would be apparent at first glance. Samuel Coleman’s Ships Unloading, New York (1868) encourages such close looking and prompts continued questioning.

“[Coleman’s painting] raises questions about race and liminal spaces. Several of the figures are rendered to appear to be non-white and of different social classes based on dress, so we need to attend to intersectional identities in this compact scene at the edge of both land and sea. The painting also invites a discussion of the relationship between regional industry and global trade, between painting and photography, as well as the shifting relationship between manual labor and technology.”

The long-term loans also provide opportunities for collaboration. Alongside a team of partners, including local professors, curators, and the conservation department at Harvard Art Museums, students will engage in conversations about connoisseurship and curatorial practice around the unusual painting attributed to Martin Johnson Heade, Two Owls at Sunset, c. 1859–60. Often, a variety of people—including professors, curators, conservators, and art dealers—all engage in questions of artistic authorship when they arise. One of the painting’s former owners first believed it was painted by Martin Johnson Heade, but later raised questions about that attribution.

“We have been looking at pigments and varnish with the conservators at Harvard Art Museums. The painting will lead to ongoing conversations over the next several years and we will invite students to think about what connoisseurship is and how curatorial practice involves a team of partners.”

Collaborating across disciplines and even across universities throughout New England, professors will include Frederic Church’s Our Banner in the Sky (1861) in their teaching, and curators at Harvard will host a Study Day around the foundation’s prints by Mary Cassatt, inviting a contemporary printmaker to discuss printmaking techniques. Located in the Art Study Center, the prints will be available on request for students, faculty, curators, and scholars to study them closely.

The second, third, and fourth years of the long-term loan offer additional possibilities for the curators at Harvard Art Museums to create new contexts and embark on dialogues with fresh installations and teaching moments, providing ample time to develop programming for students and the public. The flexibility of Terra Foundation funding allows for a variety of uses, tailored to the specific needs of Harvard Art Museum’s staff and students.

“In a way, students will ‘grow up’ with these artworks. Additionally, since we will plan programming about the paintings every year, and since this programming—as well as admission to the Harvard Art Museums—is always free for students and general audiences, we provide opportunities for continued engagement with the works.”