Anne Hawley, Director Emerita of Gardner Museum, Brings Arts to IOP

An FBI agent, an archaeologist, and a neuroscientist are just some of the past and future guests at Institute of Politics Resident Fellow Anne Hawley's weekly study sessions. Hawley served as Director of the Massachusetts Council for the Arts for more than 10 years before taking the helm of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1989. She has brought her background in leadership and advocacy for the arts to the IOP to create an interdisciplinary program of events and discussions during her residency.

According to Hawley, only two fellows before her at the 50-year-old IOP were involved primarily in the arts. Will Shih ’16, producer for Hawley’s study groups and a former member of the committee in charge of choosing the IOP fellows, told the Crimson that Hawley’s study group is part of a broader movement within the IOP to include fellows from a more diverse range of fields. “We've been looking for a while now to be able to integrate this type of theme to our program,” he said. “Over the years we've had a lot of really amazing former politicians, political journalists, government officials in, but we've been thinking about new and innovative ways that we can integrate [cross-disciplinary studies]."

Hawley's student liaisons at the Institute, whose academic interests range from economics to history and literature to art history, are part of this shift towards a more inclusive and expansive approach to the study of politics. When asked what types of students her programming aims to engage, Hawley said, "Everybody. We'd love to get people that are studying other things, whether it’s architecture or science or neurobiology or history or engineering. We especially want the engineers—we have to get them to think visually." One of the aims of Hawley's student liaisons, according to Julia E. Fay ’17, herself a first-time liaison and history and literature concentrator, is to reach out to members of the Harvard community who might not have otherwise been involved with the IOP.

The connection between art and government is natural for Hawley, who had to work closely with public officials during her 26-year tenure at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to transform the institution into a vibrant cultural resource for greater Boston. "Whether it's in education policy or zoning or in city planning or in areas of advocacy for policies in government, the arts have a powerful role not only in enhancing your life and making your brain bigger, but in enhancing public life," Hawley said. She explores this connection in her study groups, the topics of which have included American culture wars, politically motivated attacks on ancient works of art in Afghanistan, the repurposing of housing in Houston's African American neighborhoods, and the study of aesthetic perception from a neuroscientific perspective.

In addition to spanning the globe during their discussions of the intersection of art and politics in weekly study groups, Hawley's students enjoyed an exceptional opportunity closer to home when Hawley took them on a flashlight tour of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum after hours. The liaisons also mentioned lessons they have learned about their own lives under Hawley's mentorship. Fay said that she was struck by Hawley's encouragement not to be afraid of the winding path one might take in mapping out—or choosing not to map out—career trajectories.

Likewise, Shih says that Hawley urges him to pay closer attention to what is around him. "Whenever we're walking anywhere, it's always about observation. She'll always point and get me to notice something, whether it's horrible urban planning or great urban planning…. That's just something that I've learned incidentally from being around her," he said. Shih added that Hawley has also prompted him to consider a broader perspective on the role of art in the world, even outside of its political functions. "Art at its best does a lot to impart implicit lessons about humanity and how we relate to one another,” he said. “[It teaches us] something about who we are as people, and helps us understand… difficult moments in our past."