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Spotlight Tour: Birdwatching in the Museums, with Emily Feng ’25

In this photomontage, a smiling young woman, wearing a brown long-sleeve shirt and dark pants, sits in a red armchair in a library, gesturing toward an enlarged coin that appears to float overhead.
One of the works Emily Feng will spotlight is this tetradrachm of Athens (449 BCE–420 BCE), a Greek coin featuring an owl.

Tour

In-Person
Harvard Art Museums
32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA

This event does not require registration; see further details below.

On this tour, Emily Feng ’25 will guide you in a search for images of birds in the museums’ galleries and will talk about the joy that comes from birdwatching. She will also reflect on how artists have represented birds across various cultures and eras. The works on the tour will include a selection of ancient Greek coins featuring birds, the painting Two Owls at Sunset (c. 1860), temporarily on loan to us from the Terra Foundation for American Art, and Lyonel Feininger’s Bird Cloud (1926).

Spotlight Tours offer a chance to explore the collections of the Harvard Art Museums through the eyes of a Harvard student. Free and open to the public, these tours start outside the museum shop on Saturdays and Sundays at 11am and 2pm. Drop in and join the conversation! And find out what the Student Guides are up to anytime on Instagram @harvardarthappens.

Please check in with museum staff at the Visitor Services desk in the Calderwood Courtyard to request to join the tour. Tours are limited to 18 people and are available on a first-come, first-served basis; no registration is required.

The Harvard Art Museums offer free admission every day, Tuesday through Sunday. Please see the museum visit page to learn about our general policies for visiting the museums.

This program is supported by the Ho Family Student Guide Fund.

The Ho Family Student Guide Program at the Harvard Art Museums prepares students to develop original, research-based tours of the collections. Through their training, Student Guides gain knowledge of the collections and develop skills in critical thinking, visual analysis, public speaking, and leadership.

The Harvard Art Museums are committed to accessibility for all visitors. For anyone requiring accessibility accommodations for our programs, please contact us at am_register@harvard.edu at least 48 hours in advance. Please include the name and date of the program in the subject line of your email.