Student Artists Bring in the Benjamins

It isn’t often that struggling college students can make $4000 in a single weekend through legal means. But in the Student Art Show—the first of its kind at Harvard, taking place through May 4—56 student artists from varying sectors of the community will have the opportunity to display and sell their work.

“We had such a wide range of response to this event, everything from a freshman to a 35-year-old grad student,” says Margaret M. Wang ’09, co-founder of the Student Art Show.



Students from the college, graduate schools, and the Extension school were all invited to submit to the show. Concentrating in fields as disparate as neurobiology and economics, the show’s participants demonstrate the way in which interest in art spans various sectors of Harvard.

“It shows art as an underlying factor for so many people at the university,” says Paris A. Spies-Gans ’09, the other co-founder of the show. “I think it’s important to show how intrinsic art is to people here, even for people who aren’t art concentrators. We’re trying to show art as a convergence point for all the disciplines in all the schools.”

The idea of the Student Art Show was born last October when Jane K. Cheng ’09 inquired about a place for student art at a Harvard arts’ leaders luncheon. “Jane asked if there was a place to sell the books she made, and Drew [Faust, President of Harvard University] looks at Jack Megan, who is director of the OFA, and said, ‘Well now, there isn’t,’” Wang recalls.

As it became clear that this was a venue the campus was lacking, Wang and Spies-Gans decided it was something they wanted to change.

The Student Art Show garnered a significant amount of interest, receiving over 500 submissions from the Harvard community. “The amount of interest really blew us away,” Wang says. “Just the sheer number really took us by surprise. Not only the number, but the diversity.”

With pieces costing as little as $25 and as much as $4000, the artwork ranges from traditional painting and photography to papercuts, clothing, and jewelry to abstract conversions of science into art.

“That was one thing I didn’t expect,” Spies-Gans says, referring to the science-to-art piece. “I don’t understand exactly how it works; it’s made of different circles and oval shapes—it’s all about the conceptualization of data.”

The diversity in the show is not only reflected in the artwork, but in the stories of the artists themselves. The program for the show will include short biographies of all artists, whose backgrounds range from artists who grew up with painters in the family to varsity athletes and biology students. One graduate student in the show spent time in Nepal and, consequently, all the profits resulting from the sale of his artwork are going to a charity for Nepalese orphans.

The Student Art Show not only provides a forum for the sale of student art, but also a way in which those who want to become involved with the world of curating can gain experience. The show—which was entirely student run—gave organizers the opportunity to make curatorial decisions.

“There aren’t really any classes you can take at Harvard or internships at museums where you can actually curate art,” says Alissa E. Schapiro ’08, co-chair for the art selection and review committee. “Let’s just say it’s not easily accessible.”

The Student Art Show is also dedicated to bringing to campus an opportunity to integrate artists into the larger professional arts community. Trying to maximize the exposure to student work, organizers contacted galleries in Boston to personally invite them to the event.

Entirely student run, the show is able to function as a sort of microcosm of the art world, in which one not only submits and displays artwork but tackles such tasks as licenses and finance, publicity and logistics. “Probably the biggest challenge has been how to best display the artwork in the tent,” muses Spies-Gans before launching into an explication of lighting, partitions, easles, and flow.

“There are questions like, ‘Do you do sales tax?’ And I never had to deal with sales tax for any student things at Harvard,” Wang says. (The answer is yes, they did have to use sales tax for the silent auction.)

As the Arts Task Force Report observed in December, Harvard classes tend to emphasize looking at art rather than making and presenting it. According to Thomas W. Lentz, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard Art Museum, the Student Art Show will further the Task Force’s mission to improve the status of art on campus.

“We’re more than happy to support this new event that I hope becomes an annual part of Arts First,” Lentz says. “By raising awareness of the presence of art-making on campus, these students are making real contributions toward the goal of better integrating the arts at Harvard.”Extending beyond the university, the Student Art Show hopes to create a dynamic venue that will motivate students to become more involved with art in their everyday experiences. “I want them to be both impressed and inspired by their peers,” Spies-Gans says, “and to want to come back next year and to incorporate the importance of art into their lives.”

—Staff writer Rebecca A. Schuetz can be reached at schuetz@fas.harvard.edu.