Past Events
& Exhibitions
View recordings of more Radcliffe events on YouTube.
All Events & Exhibitions
Radcliffe Day 2022
Radcliffe DayOn Radcliffe Day 2022—Friday, May 27—we will award the Radcliffe Medal to Sherrilyn Ifill.
Each year on Radcliffe Day, the Institute awards the Radcliffe Medal to an individual who embodies our commitment to excellence, inclusion, and social impact. First awarded to Lena Horne in 1987, recent honorees include Dolores Huerta, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Melinda French Gates.
10:30 AM ET
10 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
The Social Costs of Pretrial Detention
Fellows' PresentationA presentation from 2021–2022 Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor Sandra Susan Smith
12 PM ET
Charismatic Robots in Everyday Human Spaces
Lectures • HRI Science Lecture Series on AIHeather Knight will present work from the Collaborative Humans and Robotics: Interaction, Sociability, Machine learning and Art (CHARISMA) robotics lab at Oregon State University. CHARISMA demonstrates the possibility of automated work and technology with everyday human communication and interactions.
1 PM ET
The Time of Slavery: History, Memory, Politics, and the Constitution
Fellows' PresentationA presentation from 2021–2022 Joy Foundation Fellow Ariela Gross
12 PM ET
Telling the Truth about All This: Reckoning with Slavery and Its Legacies at Harvard and Beyond
Conferences & SymposiaUniversities and other institutions around the world have begun to reckon with their ties to slavery and its enduring legacies. Such efforts have uncovered previously unknown or ignored histories of enslavement, financial ties to slavery, and support for racist ideologies. They have also called attention to the long history of Black leadership and resistance. Taking these histories as a starting point, this conference will consider how institutions can pursue sustained and meaningful repair.
9:15 AM ET
10 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
The Descendants (A Novel)
Fellows' PresentationA presentation from 2021–2022 Radcliffe Fellow Ladee Hubbard
12 PM ET
Who Is Policing the Police?
LecturesThis program will explore what real police accountability looks like and include the voices of current and former law enforcement officers, activists, and academics to ask the question: Who is policing the police?
4 PM ET
Making Race: Policy, Sex, and Social Order in the Early Modern French Empire
Fellows' PresentationA presentation from 2021–2022 Radcliffe Institute Fellow Mélanie Lamotte
12 PM ET
Inclusions: Envisioning Justice on Harvard’s Campus
LecturesInclusions–a participatory, student-generated art installation–serves as the inspiration for this conversation about the intersection of art, visual culture, and representation at Harvard. The discussion will foreground the perspectives of the Harvard student organizers and focus on how we can use art to envision justice collectively and translate these ideas to the immediate context of our own campus.
5 PM ET
1350 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
The Children Go (Novel in Progress)
Fellows' PresentationA presentation from 2021–2022 Mildred Londa Weisman Fellow Lysley Tenorio
12 PM ET
Out for Blood: Feminine Hygiene to Menstrual Equity (Exhibition Opening)
LecturesJoin us for a discussion featuring leading activists and scholars working toward menstrual justice. The program will open the exhibition Out for Blood: Feminine Hygiene to Menstrual Equity.
4 PM ET
Lift Ev’ry Voice: Celebrating the Music of Black Americans
PerformancesIn honor of Eileen Southern, a pioneering scholar of Black music, the Aeolians of Oakwood University will join the Harvard Choruses and the Kuumba Singers of Harvard College in concert to premiere new works and celebrate the rich legacy of Black music in the US.
7 PM ET
45 Quincy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Black Music and the American University: Eileen Southern’s Story
LecturesJoin us for the second of two one-hour webinars exploring the legacy of Eileen Southern, author of The Music of Black Americans: A History and founder and editor of The Black Perspective in Music.
4 PM ET
The Impact of Gold Mining on the Feasibility of Malaria Elimination in the Amazon
Fellows' PresentationA presentation from 2021–2022 Joy Foundation Fellow Caroline Buckee
12 PM ET
To Laugh Is Human: Gender and Comedy
Conferences & SymposiaAre we entering a new age of comedy? As once marginalized voices take center stage, fresh comedic genres are challenging assumptions about who and what can be funny. Join us as comedians, academics, and activists share their surprising insights into gender and comedy and how laughter can deepen and transform our sense of humanity.
9:30 AM ET
10 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
To Laugh Is Your Only Job
PerformancesJoin us for a night of stand-up comedy featuring student comics from the Harvard College Stand-up Comic Society and the Harvard Undergraduate Feminist Comedy Collective. Through a series of individual sets, student performers will explore the intersection of gender and comedy—and keep us laughing in the process. The program will include a brief panel discussion and a Q&A with the audience.
7 PM ET
10 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Field Studies: Hierarchy, Power Dynamics, and the Human Narrative
Fellows' PresentationA presentation from 2021–2022 Rieman and Baketel Fellow for Music Elizabeth A. Baker
12 PM ET
Feeding the Nation: Michael W. Twitty on American Foodways and the History of Enslavement
LecturesMichael W. Twitty will discuss his insights about the role of enslaved people in shaping American foodways, as well as the critical importance of including stories of the enslaved prominently in public history and historical interpretation.
4 PM ET
Women on the Frontlines of Revolution
Fellows' PresentationA presentation from 2021–2022 Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor Erica Chenoweth
12 PM ET
Equal Rights and Wrongs
LecturesOn the 50th anniversary of the US Senate’s passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), leading experts on constitutional law, politics, gender, and race will explore the complex history and legacy of the ERA, female citizenship, and America's rights tradition more broadly.
4 PM ET
Artists Surviving and Thriving in Recent Times
Radcliffe on the RoadThe upheaval of the past 2 years has acutely impacted artists’ careers and changed the ways in which they approach their work. In the next installment of our Radcliffe on the Road series, featuring Min Jin Lee RI ’19 and Ifeoma Fafunwa RI ’18, we will consider how artists have navigated the struggles and opportunities that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the forefront.
4 PM ET
The Quest for Ethical Artificial Intelligence: A Conversation with Timnit Gebru
Lectures • HRI Science Lecture Series on AITimnit Gebru will discuss why she founded the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR) and what she hopes this interdisciplinary, community-based, global network of artificial intelligence (AI) researchers can accomplish.
4 PM ET
Next in Climate Change: The Ethel and David Jackson Next in Science Program
Lectures • Next in ScienceThe speakers in “Next in Climate Change” will discuss emerging scientific research and multi-dimensional implications of climate change for people, society, and our planet.
2 PM ET
10 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Understanding Our Heliospheric Shield: Laying the Groundwork to Predict Habitable Astrospheres
Fellows' PresentationA presentation from 2021–2022 William Bentinck-Smith Fellow Merav Opher
12 PM ET
Poetry Reading and Discussion with Camille T. Dungy
Lectures • Roosevelt Poetry ReadingsCamille T. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award, and the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History (W.W. Norton, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
4 PM ET
Elect/Ability: Pride, Prejudice, and the Female Candidate
ExhibitionToday’s American political landscape showcases a diversity of strong female candidates, the culmination of a proud but contested history of women running for political office. This exhibition, drawn from the Schlesinger’s collections, presents a diversity of candidates and the struggles that they continue to face in the press, on the campaign trail, and once in office. Nevertheless, they persist.
through Friday, March 18, 2022
3 James Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Brown II
ExhibitionTomashi Jackson combines a practice based in painting and printmaking with archival research in the histories of law, urbanism, and social justice. Her work plumbs the intersections between the formal languages of visual art (color, composition, layering) and the political languages driving the histories of segregation, voting rights, education, and housing in the United States. By activating these shared motifs of art and policy, her work brings the full power of both traditions to bear on historical engagement and critical action.
through Saturday, December 18, 2021
8 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Accompanied: The Artworks of Marilyn Pappas and Jill Slosburg-Ackerman
ExhibitionThe virtual exhibition Accompanied: The Artworks of Marilyn Pappas and Jill Slosburg-Ackerman presents a pair of artists whose work was transformed by an abiding friendship. Pappas and Slosburg-Ackerman, both fellows at Radcliffe’s Bunting Institute in the 1980s, have sustained a conversation over four decades about artistic endeavor, studio practice, and pedagogy. The artists were members of the founding group of the Brickbottom Artists Building—one of the country’s first artist-developed live-work buildings—and are professors emeriti at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. They have continued to work in adjoining studios for more than 30 years and have taught generations of artists.
through Saturday, January 16, 2021
Seeing Citizens: Picturing American Women’s Fight for the Vote
ExhibitionView this digital exhibition on the Long 19th Amendment Project Portal.
through Thursday, August 26, 2021
EJ Hill: The Lily League
ExhibitionThe Lily League is part of a series of exhibitions referred to by EJ Hill as “lessons.” The Lily League borrows its name from the Black Star calla lily. Initiated during Hill's Radcliffe fellowship year, each of these lessons include a declarative chalkboard.
through Saturday, March 28, 2020
8 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Dario Robleto: Unknown and Solitary Seas
Exhibitionthrough Saturday, January 18, 2020
8 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Angela Davis: Freed by the People
ExhibitionNo single person sits more squarely at the intersection of transnational struggles for freedom than the controversial political activist and pioneering philosopher Angela Yvonne Davis. Her arrest, incarceration, and trial formed one of the most widely debated legal cases in world history. Because she sparked worldwide movements that changed the 20th century, Davis was “freed by the people” well before her trial came to an end.
through Monday, March 9, 2020
3 James Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Pine in the Sand
ExhibitionPine in the Sand tells a story about unpredictable change while highlighting the often overlooked maintenance and infrastructure enlisted to preserve and stabilize the environment.
through Tuesday, February 23, 2021
10 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Willie Cole: Beauties
ExhibitionWillie Cole’s Beauties are haunting, full-scale prints made from crushed and hammered ironing boards, each named after a woman from the artist’s family and cultural history. Cole has used irons and ironing as central motifs in his work for 30 years, evoking everything from African masks to slave ship diagrams to the routines of domestic servitude. In this special installation, the gallery will be lined wall to wall with the Beauties. Standing silent—like sentinels, tombstones, shrouds, or windows—the prints will open a space for confronting anew the whole range of often contradictory energies running through them: resistance and oppression, beauty and violence, labor and forbearance.
through Saturday, June 29, 2019
8 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Clarissa Tossin: Future Fossil
ExhibitionClarissa Tossin RI ’18 expands on her fellowship project with a newly commissioned exhibition that considers the ecology of an uncertain future. Inspired by Octavia E. Butler’s science fiction trilogy Xenogenesis (1989), in which the Amazon becomes the site for a new civilization of alien-human hybrids, Tossin speculates on a postapocalyptic world following ecological collapse. Pairing DIY plastic recycling techniques with the materials and practices of Amazonian aesthetic traditions, she highlights the contemporary footprint left in the geological sedimentation of the earth. These new works consider indigenous knowledge in relationship to the environment while also resembling ruins of a world yet to come.
through Saturday, March 16, 2019
8 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Anna Von Mertens: Measure
ExhibitionAnna Von Mertens uses the structures of quilting and drawing to examine the frontiers of human understanding. In this exhibition, commissioned for the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Von Mertens explores the life and work of Henrietta Leavitt, one of the women “computers” hired a century ago to study glass-plate astronomical photographs at the Harvard College Observatory. Leavitt searched for patterns among these glassy stars, and her findings provided a unit of measurement for galactic distances and led to our current understanding of the shape of the cosmos. Von Mertens’s meticulous stitches and intricate graphite marks reimagine Leavitt’s patient work, exploring the potency of single, measured actions as units of understanding.
through Saturday, January 19, 2019
8 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Bouchra Khalili: Foreign Office
ExhibitionThe Radcliffe Institute presents a solo exhibition featuring a selection of elements of Bouchra Khalili’s work from Foreign Office, consisting of a digital film of the same title, a group of photographs, and a silkscreen print, titled The Archipelago. The exhibition’s combination of artistic elements suggests an alternative historiography of utopian movements—working in concert, they invite reflection on potential gestures of resistance for the present and the future.
through Saturday, April 21, 2018
8 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Jennifer Bornstein: Feminist Archaeology
ExhibitionFeminist Archaeology, an exhibition created by Jennifer Bornstein RI ’15, is an interdisciplinary art project consisting of an original video projection with accompanying prints and sculptures. The exhibition explores various strains of feminism that the artist has experienced both personally and through her research and that have been somewhat at odds with one another over time.
through Saturday, January 20, 2018
8 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Altered Gazes
ExhibitionAltered Gazes foregrounds women as creators and consumers of countercultural content. In addition to materials from our growing collection of comics, zines, erotica and pornography, and other alternative publications, the exhibition features materials from the Ludlow Santo Domingo Collection, one of the largest gatherings of underground, alternative, and pop-culture publications in the world.
through Friday, January 19, 2018
3 James Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
100+ Years at 73 Brattle
ExhibitionA public art installation by John Wang ’16, winner of the biennial Radcliffe Institute Public Art Competition
through Friday, March 1, 2019
10 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Xaviera Simmons: Overlay
ExhibitionOverlay, an exhibition created by the multimedia artist Xaviera Simmons for Harvard Radcliffe Institute, uses text-based video, photographs, and soundscapes to feature characters rooted in stories and historical narratives found in the archives of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.
through Saturday, July 1, 2017
8 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Playing Fair? Title IX at 45
ExhibitionOver the past four decades, the phrase “Title IX” has become practically synonymous with women’s sports. The events leading up to Title IX’s passage in 1972 and the struggle ever since to figure out how to implement the law fairly demonstrate how athletics became part of the broader political and cultural struggles of contemporary American life.
through Saturday, September 16, 2017
3 James Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
A.K. Burns: No Time, No Place, No Body
Exhibitionthrough Friday, April 14, 2017
8 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Lamia Joreige: After the River
ExhibitionIn this exhibition, the visual artist and filmmaker Lamia Joreige uncovers the different facets of Nahr Beirut (Beirut River), with its recent and rapid transformations from dumping ground to a place scheduled for ambitious development. After the River invites reflection on the interwoven narratives of the river, its surroundings, and the people who live and work there.
through Saturday, March 4, 2017
8 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Wendy Jacob: Calm. Smoke rises vertically.
ExhibitionWorking with vibrating walls, a livestreaming weather report, and architectural models from schools for the blind, this exhibition explores sensory experience through differing modes of perception. The artist Wendy Jacob challenges the viewer to place touch on an equal footing with sight. The title comes from the Beaufort Wind Scale, which relates wind speed to observed conditions at sea or on land.
through Saturday, January 14, 2017
8 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
through Friday, March 17, 2017
3 James Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Women of the Blackwell Family: Resilience and Change
ExhibitionThe Blackwells were a multigenerational family of abolitionists, entrepreneurs, educators, musicians, doctors, writers, expatriates, suffrage supporters, and women’s rights activists.
through Friday, October 21, 2016
3 James Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Seeds of Culture: The Portraits and Stories of Native American Women
ExhibitionMatika Wilbur, a member of the Swinomish and Tulalip Tribes and the creator and director of Project 562, selects a group of striking photographs from among the thousands of portraits she has taken in recent years. Written narratives and audio of the interviews she conducted as part of her project accompany the photographs. Elders, activists, educators, culture-bearers, artists, and students have shared with Wilbur their realities as Native women. They convey how ancestral and contemporary identities shape their lives and hopes in Indian Country.
through Saturday, May 28, 2016
8 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Valérie Massadian: Little People
ExhibitionThere should be a fancy text here.
There won’t be. Sorry. I’m not fancy.
I’d rather get on my knees and talk with children
I’d rather talk to strangers whose language sometimes I can’t understand
I’d rather sense people, little and not so little, beyond language
I’d rather share the beauty of silence between two souls
I’d rather protect the sensuality and the precious way children improvise the world I’d rather spend time building a shack with a four-year-old than socialize
I’d rather, you’d rather, we’d rather. . .
In here, I’ll gently ask you to take your shoes off, and if you got holes in your socks, who cares, I do very often.
And when you take your shoes off, try to also take your armor off—for here, you can roll on the carpet, lay on the bed, draw on the walls, hide in the closet, sit in silence, gaze into the joy, the sadness, the way children are in and out of the world they live in, with and without us.
—Valérie Massadian
through Saturday, April 16, 2016
8 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
“A Language to Hear Myself”: Feminist Poets Speak
Exhibition“A Language to Hear Myself”: Feminist Poets Speak celebrates the ways that feminist poets fashioned words and ideas into a powerful form of personal and political expression.
through Friday, June 17, 2016
3 James Street
Cambridge, MA 02138