The Fogg Museum, which opened to the public in 1895, is Harvard’s oldest art museum. It is renowned for its extensive holdings of European and American art from the Middle Ages to the present. Comprising paintings, sculpture, photographs, prints, drawings, and decorative arts, the Fogg Museum’s collection offers students, scholars and visitors a comprehensive survey of the history of Western art. Particular strengths include Italian early Renaissance, 17th-century Dutch, and 19th-century French and British art, including one of America’s premier collections of works by the Pre-Raphaelites and the celebrated Maurice Wertheim collection of impressionist and postimpressionist paintings. The museum also owns a significant group of 19th- and 20th-century American paintings and works on paper, and is responsible for the Harvard University Portrait Collection, which represents individuals associated with Harvard’s history.
Founded in 1903 as the Germanic Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum is the only museum in North America dedicated to the study of art from the German-speaking countries of central and northern Europe in all media and in all periods. Its holdings include significant works of Austrian Secession art, German expressionism, 1920s abstraction, and material related to the Bauhaus. Other strengths include late medieval sculpture and 18th-century art. The museum also holds noteworthy postwar and contemporary art from German-speaking Europe, including works by Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, and Gerhard Richter, as well as one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of works by Joseph Beuys.
Opened in 1985, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum holds world-renowned collections of Asian art, most notably, archaic Chinese jades and Japanese surimono, as well as outstanding Chinese bronzes, ceremonial weapons, Buddhist cave-temple sculptures, ceramics from China and Korea, Japanese works on paper, and lacquer boxes. The ancient Mediterranean and Byzantine collections are comprised of significant works in all media from Greece, Rome, Egypt, and the Near East. Strengths include Greek vases, small bronzes, and coins from throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. The museum also holds exceptional works on paper from Islamic lands and India, including paintings, drawings, calligraphy, and manuscript illustrations, with particular strength in Rajput art, as well as important Islamic ceramics from the 8th through 19th century.