Matisse Is In My Room: A Look at the Student Print Rental Program at the Harvard Art Museums

Have you ever wanted to improve your dorm decoration game by hanging up a real Matisse print on your wall?

At the beginning of each fall semester, Harvard students are given the opportunity to bring a part of a museum into their dorms. Through the Student Print Rental Program at the Harvard Art Museums, students are invited to borrow art prints from the museums’ collection for the academic year.

Every year approximately 300 prints are made available. The program offers a diverse collection of prints, including works by famous artists like Picasso, Andy Warhol, and Matisse, as well as pieces by local artists.

“About five students — Harvard students — helped our print curator to select a print from living artists,” said Jeanne Burke, the Museums’ Academic and Public Programs coordinator.

The print rental program’s curatorial process involves both Harvard Art Museums staff and Harvard students. While Elizabeth Rudy, the Curator of Prints, oversees the selection of the prints for the collection, students are invited to go to print fairs with the curators to help with the process.

“Hopefully some new names can circulate and people can get interested in artwork that isn’t, maybe, well known,” said Jordan Bradley, the Collections Management Coordinator.

On Sept. 9, the Museums hosted an After Hours event, where students interested in the Student Print Rental Program could view the prints available for rent that year.

In previous years, students could view available prints during this After Hours event to select the prints they wanted to rent out. This fall, however, the print selection process moved online, allowing students to browse and select prints digitally. The change was intended to make the rental program more accessible to students with busy schedules.

“Images can be a little bit different on the computer as well. The color, the vibrancy, is different, so we wanted to give students a chance to see them in real life before the opportunity to select them online,” said Burke.

The appeal of the program goes beyond decoration for a dorm room.

“I feel like it offers you a chance to go into different worlds a little bit and bring the museum into your own dorm,” said Alyssia Wiesenbauer ’26, a student participating in the Student Print Rental Program.

The Student Print Rental program seeks to bring real art into students’ lives. Many of these prints would otherwise be inaccessible, making the experience of living with them all the more unique.

“It’s a cool opportunity to kind of live with a work of art that normally lives in a museum, but lives with you for the year,” said Burke.

Harvard’s campus is aesthetically pleasing in its own way — with its red brick walls and fall foliage. However, students often find themselves cut off from visual art, like paintings and sculptures, despite their proximity to the museum collections.

“I think, especially as Harvard students, we have all of these aspirations of getting out and going to the museum and looking at all of the art there. But sometimes it’s nice to just have something to look at in your dorm as well,” Wiesenbauer said.

The museums offer a rare opportunity to bypass the typical high financial barriers of owning art.

“In terms of even just thinking about the price of a print when you graduate, are you going to be buying original prints by artists to decorate your space? Maybe you are, maybe you’re not. If you’re not one of those people that is going to be buying works of art when you graduate, this is a great opportunity to have a work of art that normally lives in a museum collection in your space,” Burke said.

Harvard students interested in participating in the Student Print Rental Program in future years can subscribe to the Harvard Art Museums’ newsletter, where details about sign-ups will be posted.

“I think it can help students just understand that art is for everybody, and that you all can stake a claim in these works and maybe encourage people to try something out that they wouldn’t normally be interested in or attracted to and see sort of where it goes from there,” Bradley said.

—Staff writer Anastasia Poliakova can be reached at anastasia.poliakova@thecrimson.com.