A Mythic Space: The Closing of the Harvard Art Museums

20-minute documentary film

senior thesis, accompanying thesis paper

Tufts University Department of Art History

In June 2008, the Harvard Art Museums closed in preparation for a six-year-long renovation project. In the weeks surrounding the closings I filmed the three museums, including the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Arthur M. Sackler Museums, and interviewed employees, visitors, and community members regarding their impressions and opinions of the closings. The result is an elegiac memorial of a museum on the brink of change, and a timely study of the importance of university museums as an educational resource in a community.