Art House

Antique wallpaper from Lowell House depicting scenes from the Revolutionary War. By Rohan W. Goel

Professor Diana L. Eck stands in front of an ornate trousseau chest in the living room of her home, the Lowell House Masters’ residence. “About six years ago, when they were renovating Baker Library over at the Business School, it had sat on one of the grand staircases, I guess. The renovation took place during the summer, and I was home, and they emailed all the House Masters, saying, ‘Does anyone have room for a big chest?’ And I emailed right back and said, ‘How big?’”

The chest, which is covered in wood carvings depicting ships and kneeling angels, is large and deep, with an open space partially filled with books about religion and back issues of The Chronicle of Higher Education. “And I said, ‘Sure, we’d love to have it––I’ll be right over in my van.’ And it’s so huge and heavy that there’s no way I could get it in the back of my Odyssey van.” The chest did make it back, however, and now sits in the corner of a room filled with other pieces of antique furniture, oil paintings, and objects Eck brought back from trips to India.

While it is uncommon for House Masters to acquire Harvard artifacts in this way––Eck says this has happened once in her entire tenure––the story of how the chest was acquired betrays the agency the House Masters have in the ongoing relationship between a House and its artifacts. As we talked to the Masters of Cabot, Pforzheimer, and Lowell, it became clear that the House Master role can be as different as the Masters themselves. However, a common ground among all of them is the position the House Masters fill as the keepers of the Houses’ traditions and history.

HOUSE FIXTURES

While House communities might feel permanent––a static landscape we enter into as sophomores and depart from as seniors––they are, like Harvard itself, continually evolving. One of the greatest spurs of this evolution is changes in House Masters. Along with her husband, Dr. John R. Durant, and their nine-year-old son, Jamie, History of Science professor Anne Harrington ’82 is just about to complete her first academic year living in the squat, modern Pforzheimer Masters’ residence. “We’re pretty new,” Harrington explains several times as we walk through Pfoho’s many different rooms, though the friendly, familiar interactions between her and the various Pfoho students we encounter hardly betrays this newness.

In contrast, Eck and Reverend Dorothy A. Austin have served as Lowell’s House Masters for almost 16 years. For several generations of Harvard students, Lowell’s identity has been completely intertwined with the elegant pair of women who preside over its community. “Being House Master is in part being a curator of the history and tradition of the House, but also an innovator,” Eck tells us, standing in one of the many stately rooms within the red brick, ivy-covered Lowell Masters’ residence.

Eck is clearly enthusiastic about embodying this role of House curator, proudly showing us the 20-page booklet she produced entitled “Hanging around Lowell House,” which explains the life stories behind the many portraits adorning Lowell’s walls. Talking to Eck and Harrington respectively, it becomes clear that this intimate knowledge of the House’s multifarious artifacts is something that grows and accumulates over time. “There might be treasures no one has told us about,” Harrington says. “But I don’t think we have any.”

Future dean of Harvard College Professor Rakesh Khurana and his wife, Stephanie R. Khurana, fall comfortably in the middle of this process. With nearly four years as Cabot House Masters under their belts, the two are simultaneously full of stories of Radcliffe and its history and eager to learn and acquire more.

“For whatever reason, in the process of merging between Harvard and Radcliffe, I think a really important part of the history of Radcliffe was lost,” says Rakesh Khurana, who will take over as dean of Harvard College in July. Part of both his and his wife’s project as House Masters has been to revive that history by collecting photographs, taking Radcliffe yearbooks out of Schlesinger Library, and, in the future dean’s case, spending hours on eBay trying to track down various old Radcliffe artifacts. The Khuranas seem to have a sense of their role as caretakers for these artifacts, be they handed down or reclaimed. “Part of it is somebody took the care to preserve it, and somebody took the care to donate it, and somebody took the care to make sure it got passed on, so you feel this responsibility to care for it,” Rakesh Khurana says.

KEEPING UP APPEARANCES

Along with preserving and curating the history and culture of the Houses, Masters must also oversee the renovations necessary to keep House life vibrant and relevant to contemporary student life. Yet while certain levels of renovation will always be necessary, the extent and manner to which this is approached is often at the Masters’ discretion.

Discussing renovations to Bertram Hall and Briggs Common Room, the Khuranas explain that they use old photographs of what these spaces looked like in Radcliffe days as inspiration for the remodelling process. “It’s the idea that drawing on the richness of the past is a strong foundation,” Stephanie Khurana explains, adding that she believes in “learning from the past and seeing what’s valuable in a very open and transparent way.”

However, the principle of “seeing what’s valuable” must, in turn, involve distinguishing this value from what is not valuable and being ready to know when to let things go. In contrast with much of Pfoho, the Radcliffe Parlor Room in Holmes Hall––a large, well-lit room with antique furniture placed sparsely in an arrangement that seems to invite a rather stiff form of socializing––has hardly changed at all since the 1950s. “This room probably has much the same feel as when the Radcliffe girls were here,” Harrington says. The room is conspicuously empty, and as a result has a slightly eerie, forgotten atmosphere. “I think it’s a bit on the down and out,” Harrington comments. “We’re actually about to renovate it because I think it’s a little bit sad.”

Yet with renovation comes loss, and negotiating the the inevitability of this loss is not always easy. Walking into Lowell’s Junior Common Room, the first thing that stands out is the room’s vivid historic wallpaper, which depicts scenes from early American history, including George Washington crossing the Delaware. The wallpaper has been in Lowell since 1930. “People say, ‘Why don’t you paint over it and put some student artwork up?’” she [WHO] says. “But really the only other place you’ll see this is in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House.”

The danger of losing this sense of history is especially great in spaces that were formerly part of Radcliffe. The cold, grey, tunnel-like hallways of Pfoho’s basement do not at first appear likely to hold much historical significance. Yet Harrington has taken us down here for a reason. She pushes back a door inscribed with the words “On Harvard Time” to reveal a large, dusty room framed by shelves heaving with cascading books. Rows of studio lights hang from the ceiling, and the windows are covered with blackout blinds; the room is poised for filming.

Bust of Abbot Lawrence Lowell, former president of the University. By Rohan W. Goel

Yet years before this room served as the “On Harvard Time” studio, it was the home of the Harvard-Radcliffe Film Workshop. The workshop, which ran for a two-year period in the mid-1970s, was created by Bob Doyle, then a research fellow in the Visual and Environmental Studies Department. “You can see multiple layers of history here,” Harrington explains. “In the ’60s, it was the Moors Music Library, and it was full of records.” We walk through the room, and Harrington points out a set of sound booths built into the wall. “Back in the day, people would go in there with their records and listen with headphones for the music classes they were taking.” The image this conjures––of a much slower-paced, deliberate way of studying––contrasts sharply with the the current reality of rows of students glued to their laptops in Lamont.

Looking up at the lights hanging from the ceiling, Harrington remarks, “These are artifacts from what was I think in Radcliffe’s history the nerve center of music and broadcasting.” Yet despite that fact, the room is about to be gutted. “We’re going to turn it into a social space, a dedicated party room, and a lot of this––the bookshelves––will go. It’s sort of sad, but on the other hand…it’s a generously sized space, and we have a need for that.”

THE RADCLIFFE PERSPECTIVE

A copy of The New Yorker and a couple of cocktail napkins rest atop the coffee table in front of the Khuranas. Underneath the table lie partially obscured artifacts from the Radcliffe days—a couple of plates, a book with pictures of old common rooms, a Radcliffe pennant. Rakesh pulls out one in particular: a black and white sketched poster of a woman with a tired but unrelenting face. The caption reads, “She will die, but she will never give up.” The woman is Alice Paul, author of the original Equal Rights Amendment, and the quote is from the psychiatrist who evaluated her while she was on hunger strike and in prison for her work in support of women’s suffrage.

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Khurana sees the poster as emblematic of the type of complex relationship between Harvard and women that runs through Cabot’s history as a former part of Radcliffe. “The idea of even women being educated on par with men was a revolutionary idea…. Social change begins here,” he says. The co-Masters use the artifacts that fill the their home—from posters and yearbooks to pictures of Radcliffe alumnae Eleanor Roosevelt ’41 and Benazir Bhutto ’73—to tie them to the revolutionary spirit of Radcliffe and to encourage them to look critically at the Harvard of today. “I think this value of pushing the boundaries, this pioneering, looking for social change, I think that that’s something we try to foster,” Stephanie Khurana says.

For the future dean and his wife, artifacts have the potential to reinvigorate this spirit and to evaluate whether or not  how we act today does justice to the goals and struggles of those who came before us. As an example, they both reference Helen Keller and her struggle for inclusive education. “What was the project that people here were trying to get done, and have we done it?” Khurana asks. “If the idea was to create an inclusive learning community where everyone felt that they had a place here and that they were coming at it in a way that each of their contributions and gifts and biographies were recognized as valid and valuable, I don’t think we’re there yet.”

STORIED OBJECTS

The Khuranas project the same sense of energy and hope for change that they see in the Radcliffe artifacts. Both have something to add to the others’ answer for almost every question. They discuss empowering students, fostering diversity, and finding ways to refresh how they see the world. Eck is equally welcoming, greeting us at the door with a smile and immediately ushering us to the nearest artifact—a bust of Abbott Lawrence Lowell’s dog, Phantom, which sits like a real cocker spaniel under the piano in the foyer. Eck, who has served as Lowell’s master for three times as long as the others put together, carries with her a sense of history and tradition. As we walk through the Masters’ residence and Lowell, she is keen to tell everyone we pass that she is showing us “the Harvard properties.” The difference between her and the Cabot House Masters seems to well analogize the difference between the artifacts they each highlight.

While the Cabot artifacts we discussed are mostly posters and pictures that speak to the spirit of Radcliffe, the Lowell artifacts carry a sense of the wealth and culture that is synonymous with a more conventional conception of Harvard. Eck takes us past portraits of Lowell after Lowell, a trousseau chest, a checkerboard, and various other antiques, and portraits of Lowell after Lowell.

Eck has a story for nearly every artifact we pass. The grandfather clock in her foyer is an 1819 gift from Robert Gay Hooke. “It’s an old Tiffany clock,” she says, pointing for evidence to the “Tiffany & Co.” inscribed on its face. The clock is dark, slender, and imposing, the painted human face atop its clock face drawing one’s gaze to the corner in which it stands. Until the early 2000s, the clock used to be tended by Harvard’s keeper of the clocks. “It’s a particular task that this really eccentric old man fulfilled for a while,” Eck says. His name was Charles Ditmas, and according to an article in The New York Times, he had a penchant for checkered suits, interrupting meetings, and behaving as if nothing mattered more than time. “After we moved in, he came and knocked at the door one day, and we asked, ‘Well, who would you be?’ And he said, ‘Well, I’m the keeper of the clocks,’” Eck says. After informing them that their clock had spent 25 years without the appropriate attention, he was quick to cart it off. It is unclear whether he interviewed the House Masters, as The New York Times noted he had a habit of doing, to see if they were deserving of the clock they had, and therefore of his services. He did, however, return the clock restored to working order.

LEARNING FROM THE PAST

It is dinner time, and Lowell Dining Hall is bustling with students. Eck, weaving her way between them, tells us the stories of the various Lowells on the walls: Percival, the astronomer who discovered “the late, great planet Pluto”; Abbott Lawrence Lowell, the University president who was “a bit of an anti-Semite”; Amy Lowell, his sister who “smoked cigars and…was a lesbian.” As she tells the story of each, the portraits change. They become monuments to history rather than mere pictures of long-dead and rather pale-looking people. As Eck puts it, “It’s important to have that sense of history. Harvard is built on history and tradition and, of course, change.” In a way, [the portraits] add to the sense of what Harvard was, what it stands for, and what it is.

Later on, Harrington echoes this as we stride through Pfoho. “I quite like our feisty history. It’s a non-pretentious history, it’s a history of rising from a place of somewhat marginalized status to one of full integration, and I think that’s a worthy history,” she says.

This brings up the question, then, of having characters like President Lowell in the dining hall or the Masters’ residence. “He’s one of the people who lobbied to have a Jewish quota in the ’20s...and he was one of the people who presided over...well not he himself, but his dean—over the Secret Court that expelled homosexuals.” When asked whether it was a problem to have someone who did such things hanging above students who must eat in his company three times a day, Eck replies, “Absolutely…. If he weren’t there, we wouldn’t get to talk about him. And if we took down all the portraits of all the people we disagreed with, then most of the portraits in the university would be gone.”

While Eck speaks about the value of such artifacts’ ability to inspire conversation about the mistakes we have made in the past, it remains a question whether keeping such portraits in their place serves as more of a reminder to examine our faults or a memorial to the people within the golden frames. “People should know…who they’re eating with and what their story is,” Eck says. Perhaps, then, part of what the House Masters are entrusted with is to serve as living interpreters of these artifacts, to keep the history of each House alive not only by holding or curating its properties but also by knowing and sharing their stories. If they do not, can the portraits, pictures, busts, and posters serve their purpose?

MIRROR MIRROR

Towards the end of our tour of Pfoho, Harrington steps into the role of living interpreter when she  pauses by an elevator, where Chelsea C. Grant ’15 is waiting to return to her dorm.

“Do you have any mirrors upstairs?” Harrington asks.

“Yes,” Grant replies.

“Do you know why they’re there?”

“I have no idea.”

“Because back when this was a Radcliffe dorm, it was so the girls could make sure they looked good before they met their boyfriends in the parlor downstairs. And some rooms have hooks [to prop open the doors], because when you entertained visitors in your room you had to have the hook up so nothing would happen.”

Grant laughs incredulously. “Really? Are you serious? How do you know this stuff?”

“Well, because I’m the House master.”

—Staff Writer Keerthi Reddy can be reached at kreddy@college.harvard.edu. Staff Writer Indiana T. Seresin can be reached at tseresin@college.harvard.edu.