Crimson Arts Rolls with the Pitches

“If Nicki Minaj releases a new single and it isn’t reviewed by Crimson Arts, does it actually exist?” So ponders Brian B. Kim ’15, an active Crimson Arts editor and the current music executive for the Arts section of The Harvard Crimson. Crimson Arts, which will run from now until the death of Art, has carved out a unique niche on campus, according to Arts Chair Natalie T. Chang ’15, an active Crimson Arts chair. “My life is falling apart,” Chang says.

Will Holub-Moorman, posing with co-Campus Arts exec Tree Palmedo. By Rohan W. Goel

Chang’s co-chair, Erica X Eisen ’16, an active Crimson Arts Chair, agrees. “Crimson Arts’ uniqueness asks all kinds of questions about art, and brings to Harvard’s campus a new awareness of the indisputable grammatical fact that there’s no need for a comma before the ‘and’ in this quote. Good lord, Will, how many times?” Eisen says.

Since its start as a syndicalist samizdat produced by three seniors living in the Dudley Co-op, Crimson Arts has become, if anything, more mysterious and insular, according to members of other boards of The Crimson. “Honestly, at first, I thought [Crimson] Arts was just a group of people who sat around at the other end of the newsroom and listened to someone talk about Marvel movies,” says Cooper, an active Crimson managing editor whose name was changed due to “fear of Jude.” Jaden, an active FM chair and ex-Arts chair who also spoke on the condition that his name be changed, calls Crimson Arts a “hydra,” whatever that means.

However, Crimson Arts represents a unique voice on campus, according to Campus Arts Executive Tree A. Palmedo ’16. “The Office for the Arts calendar isn’t going to just replicate itself,” says Palmedo, an active Crimson Arts executive. “Artists visiting campus aren’t just going to talk about their artistic process without being prompted. We have a critical role in Harvard’s ecosystem of art.”

Palmedo’s co-Campus Arts executive, Will Holub-Moorman ’16, an active Crimson Arts executive and the author of this article, concurs with Palmedo: “Imagine art as a whale. A whale needs a lot of krill in order to survive. You do the math,” Holub-Moorman says. And thus the article ended.