Harvard Art Museums Reopen After Being 'Taken Apart' And 'Put Back Together'

The Harvard Art Museums reopened Sunday after more than six years of renovations.

"This has been much more than a building project," says Thomas Lentz, director of the Harvard Art Museums. "In reality, we've taken everything apart here — physically, structurally, operationally, even conceptually — and put it back together again."

Lentz recently took Radio Boston on a tour of the museums, starting in the Calderwood Courtyard. He called the courtyard the "the newly transformed heart of the Harvard Art Museums." It's a stunning, light-drenched courtyard. It has the feel of an open piazza, which is fitting, given that the well-known Italian architect, Renzo Piano, designed it.

The very top floor of the remodeled museum contains a "Lightbox Gallery," where you can look out across the steepled rooftops of Harvard and much of Cambridge. Even on a cloudy day, light pours in through Renzo Piano's glass and steel structure, lighting up the stone courtyard below and the adjacent galleries.

The "Art Study Center" — a 5,000 square foot gallery — or study area — is designed to encourage that idea of "close looking" at art. The room works a bit like a lending library: students can come in and check out a piece of art and then just sit with it.

Thomas Lentz, director of the Harvard Art Museums, which tweets @harvartmuseums.

Joseph Thompson, director of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, which tweets @MASS_MoCA.

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