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Virtual Student Guide Tour: Losing Your Head, with Sawyer Taylor-Arnold

In this photomontage, a young woman gestures toward a painting of a friar with a cleaver in his head and a dagger near his heart. He cradles a book in his left hand and points with his right. Standing on a snowy college campus, the woman wears a beanie, glasses, a plaid shirt, and jeans.
One of the works Sawyer Taylor-Arnold will discuss is Lorenzo Lotto’s 1549 painting Friar Angelo Ferretti as Saint Peter Martyr. Photomontage by Camran Mani.

Tour

Sawyer Taylor-Arnold ’23 will highlight a few of the not-so-pretty subjects that have fascinated painters over the centuries—notably, head wounds, decapitated bodies, and severed heads. Moving through the museums’ collections, Taylor-Arnold will explore the symbolic and historical significance of Lorenzo Lotto’s portrait Friar Angelo Ferretti as St. Peter Martyr (1549), Gustave Moreau’s The Apparition (1876–77), and Johannes Molzahn’s Four Fallen Soldiers in Cosmic Space (c. 1916).

This interactive tour will take place online via Zoom. To join, click the following link: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/91869368206 (free admission; no pre-registration required).

Virtual Student Guide Tours take place every Thursday at 8pm (Eastern) on Zoom. Each tour is unique and offers a chance to explore the collections of the Harvard Art Museums through the eyes of a Harvard student. Drop in and join the conversation!

Read these instructions on how to join a meeting on Zoom. For general questions about Student Guide Tours, email am_register@harvard.edu.

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

The Ho Family Student Guide Program at the Harvard Art Museums trains students to develop original, research-based tours of the collections. These tours, designed and led by Harvard undergraduates from a range of academic disciplines, focus on objects chosen by each Student Guide and offer a unique, thematic view into the collections.

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.

The Harvard Art Museums are open to the public. Currently, reservations are required for all visitors and can be made up to three weeks in advance. Please visit the museum website for more information.