Harvard Exhibitions

Current exhibitions at Havard University Museums. No Slop, No Second Screen: Animation – the hard-won image is on view at the Carpenter Center until October 4, 2026. Organised by Ruth Lingford, the exhibition showcases work by Harvard students, faculty and visiting artists. Four screens show a selection of films, 19 works in total. I had two favourites. I loved VES 10 / Final Drawing Output a collaborative animation by seven artists from 2007. The images show a life model, perspectives from each model from around the figure. There was a point in the film where the work jumped into life. Each rendering in a unique style complete with additions, erasures, traces of previous drawings. I also loved Andante, by Xiao Xiao from 2014. Projected figures walk along a keyboard of a piano, playing the music. The project is in real-time and I received information afterwards a programme ran to push each key in time with the figure animation. It was elegant and technically brilliant. I also love the building, CCVA which is the centre for contemporary art at Harvard University. It was designed by Le Corbusier, completed in 1963.

The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, shot in 2023.

Glass Flowers: The Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants is one of the most remarkable exhibitions I have seen. Permanently housed in the Harvard Museum of Natural History, the “Glass Flowers” were made by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, father and son. In total, the Blaschka’s produced 4,300 models. The volume, and intricacy are striking. As well as flowers, displays in the museum include coral and jelly fish. The level of detail includes roots and magnified fruits and flowers for teaching. A huge thank you to Michelle Viise for taking me to this exhibition.

Exhibition of glass flowers at Harvard Museum of Natural History.

Finally, a lunchtime visit to Harvard Art Museums. Thank you to Ruth Lingford for a fascinating tour – and coffee. I loved the relief below, and the Japanese woodblock print selection. There are Buddhist figures and upstairs, a collection of pigments, paints and open conservation windows, where it is possible to see the behind the scenes conservation work. A brilliant idea. Blue was on display when I visited. On my final day I visited Cooking Up Change: Women’s Agency and Community Building Through Cookbooks. An exhibition of cookbooks complete with stains of use. 

Harvard Art Museums

My sketchbook and notes from No Slop, No Second Screen.

Postcard from Cooking Up Change at the Lia and William Poorvu Gallery, Schlesinger Library.

Toronto

Niagara Falls – crossing the border from the U.S.A. to Canada by train.
 

From 9–15 August I was in Toronto for a week of in-depth archival research at HREC and UCRDC. The project “Animated Testimonies from Ukraine in the Holodomor” is part-funded by a Research Grant from HREC, the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium. The idea to visit Toronto was from Marta Baziuk, Executive Director of HREC. I worked with the archives and collections from HREC Special Collections and the Ukrainian Canadian Research & Documentation Centre. This includes survivors’ stories and materials collected for Harvest of Despair, the first feature film about the Holodomor, produced by UCRDC. This was a fantastic week including meeting Roman Waschuk, Iroida Wynnyckyj, the team at UCRDC and a fantastic insight into the collections from Bozhena Gembatiuk. I met and worked with Karolina Koziura, from the Munk School at the University of Toronto and met and spoke to Michael Cherkas, author of Red Harvest. I spent one day at the Petro Jacyk Central and East European Resource Centre at the University of Toronto where I met Ksenya Kiebuzinski who, as well as an introduction to the collections also introduced me to Substack posts which I have been reading avidly from Paul Krugman and Heather Cox Richardson. Both a fantastic overview and insight into American economics and history in a contemporary context. At PJRC I viewed material from the Maps Collections, animations directed by Volodymyr Honcharov and Natalia Marchenkova, a short from the diaries of Oleksandr Dovzhenko directed by Andrii Donchyk (1988) and read work from Anna Shternshis and Oksana Kis.

I managed to fit in a short trip to Niagara Falls, a visit to Casa Loma, a trip to Kensington Market and an evening of bliss in Robarts Library. This was one of the most fantastic weeks of my academic career and thank you to Marta, the teams at HREC and UCRDC and everybody else who I met and spent time with in Toronto, some of whom I haven’t mentioned here. Thank you.

Archival materials at UCRDC on video tape. 

Archival materials at UCRDC on film.

Double page spread from Red Harvest by Michael Cherkas.

The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks: Life and Death under Soviet Rule. Graphic novel by Igort.
 

Coffee break in downtown Toronto.

Archival materials at UCRDC – Holodomor Survivors.

In the Shadow of Stalin, graphic novel about Mr. Jones based on the film. By Andrea Chalupa and Ivan Rodrigues.

Viewing station at Robarts Library, University of Toronto with collections from PJRC.
 

UCRDC work in progress.

Bozhena Gembatiuk, me, and Roman Waschuk (seated).

Important and missing ideas from Marta Baziuk and Yana Khalik.

“Niagara”. Film with Marilyn Monroe, 1953, return train to New York viewing.

Research Meeting: Professor Lisa Stansbie Monday 10 August

Leadership, travelling, archival work, coding, objects, relationships of objects, system of approach, rule-based approach, animals, black raven, life and death, testimonies, pencil drawings, disintegration, hands, gestures, drawing interviewees, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, aprute [unreadable], website (publishing) audio recording, community members, music, space for seeing what happens, secret service files, finger prints, animation timings, pencil drawings, structure and vision, short film, meetings.

Donauinsel – The Danube Island

I spent time in Vienna in July on my way to the RUTA Association conference in Uzhhorod. The images below are from Donauinsel, The Danube Island. I shot all on Kodak UltraMax 400, fast becoming my favourite 35mm film. Donauinsel, The Danube Island is an artificial island built as a flood protection project between 1972 and 1988. The island splits the river in two. The Danube flows to the south, the New Danube (Neue Donau) runs north of the natural river. I walked along the north side of the island, the photos below show the Neue Donau. The images relate to rural landscapes, street drawings I created in Ukraine which I will write about in a separate post.

Wien Museum. “The danube Island: 13 Miles of Freedon.” Accessed August 1, 2026, at https://www.wienmuseum.at/donauinsel_2026_en.

Вибачте Номерів Немає

Я відвідала студійну екскурсію арт-проекту «Sorry No Rooms Available». Я познайомилася з художником Петром Ряском. Петро почав працювати з художниками в готелі «Інтурист-Закарпаття» у 2016 році. У рамках проєкту проводяться резиденції та проекти художників. Мені дуже сподобалася ця робота Patrycja Plich 2018 року. Вірші та текст зʼявляються на світильниках на 4-му поверсі готелю.

 

Петро відремонтував готельні номери, щоб створити простори для життя та роботи художників. Петро показав мені три кімнати з оригінальними меблями та робочим освітленням. Внизу є ресторан та арт-простір. Більше інформації онлайн: https://sorrynoroomsavailable.tumblr.com/ та в Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sorrynoroomsavailable/. Арт-простір – це оранжерея, а в ресторані є місце для виставок.

The City / Misto. 1928.

 

The City is a Ukrainian novel by Valerian Pidmohylnyi, 1928. This edition is translated with an introduction by Maxim Tarnawsky, 2025. Set in Kyiv, the main character is a student who has arrived from his village. The book opens with an unexpected horizon. The main character, Stepan, looking into the distance. As Stepan finds his way through his world the author gives a glorious account of the city in the 1920s.

The existential parts of the text reminded me of my student reading. The connection between Pidmohylnyi and his main character includes Pidmohylnyi’s work in Kyiv and arrival from a village. The city and the village are a central theme of the novel.

Other city literature includes Christopher Isherwood’s novels about Berlin in the 1930s. Isherwood saw his role as a camera-like observer. His biography is written in the third person and deliberately objective. There are also connections to The Outsider by Camus. One of my favourite descriptions of Camus’ work is by Christopher Bollas who describes the detachment of the main character from his emotions and the link the author makes to time in the novel. In a brilliant description of the main character observing the street around him, Bollas describes the pace of the novel and the relationship between time and space in the book. According to Bollas, the connection to Baudelaire’s ideas about city life is important to analyse The Outsider (The Stranger) because Camus’ work adds an important dimension: “he splits the viewer’s self in two: an alive observer, a dead self. The prose is animated but Meursault is not; just as he is removed from the people he sees, he is a “stranger” to the very prose that describes him” (Bollas, 2018, p. 28). I am collecting ideas about observation and witnessing for a roundtable I have been invited to present at next week. I am exploring witnessing, in relation to testimonies from the Holodomor and to the Full-Scale Invasion by Russia in Ukraine.

Bollas, C. (2018) Meaning and Melancholia: Life in the Age of Bewilderment. Routledge.
Isherwood, C. (2012) Christopher and His Kind. Vintage.
Pidmohylnyi, V. (2025) The City. Translated with an introduction by M. Tarnawsky. Harvard University Press.

Research meeting: Professor Lisa Stansbie

 

Toronto, archives, cataloguing, data themes, words and expressions, uses of language, preparation, film production, reading lists, digital archives, language and machine learning, models, transcription, text mining, Berman, bridges, Ukraine, interactive digital film space, gallery, performance, public and private, split screen work, instructions, website, community involvement, dissemination, distribution, visual style, narrative production, website, publicity, Rozpad, postcards, inquiry testimonies, audio tapes, uncatalogued archives, visuals, animation, sources, digitisation of tapes, machine collection, what technology to take, Torgsin, bread lines, fields, bread cards, fingertips, bridges, Berman’s bridge, project completion, time, animation, slow, preparation, schedules, changes in memory over time, stories, research, oral testimony, oral histories, Portelli, Thompson, online learning, HREC course, production, pauses, Alexievich, documenting pauses, how people use their voice. Students.