Harvard pitches cross-curriculum ArtLab
Harvard University is seeking city approval for a new ArtLab and pavilion on its Allston campus.
The 9,000-square-foot Harvard ArtLab proposed for North Harvard Street would provide flexible art, theater, music, editing and film co-working space for small Harvard-related arts activities.
Harvard has spent eight years looking at ways to give the arts a more central role in the university’s intellectual life, it said in a filing with the Boston Planning & Development Agency. Its current art spaces are segregated by school, department and medium, and discourage cross-discipline work and collaboration, the filing said.
Siting the Art
Lab in Allston would add to Harvard’s “innovation ecosystem” there that includes the i-Lab, Life Lab and Launch Lab, according to the school.
“Harvard has identified the need for experimental, flexible working space for faculty and student artists, allowing them to cross traditional boundaries, art forms and practices, departments and schools,” the university’s filing states. “The ArtLab will meet the needs of the choreographer who wishes to combine video projection with dance, or the visual artist who wishes to incorporate sound in an installation.”
The ArtLab would host exhibits, gallery events and other programs open to the community, and an exterior public space called the Art Yard would be used for arts-related and other events, including as a site for food trucks.
Harvard wants to build the 4,500-square-foot Harvard Business School Commons Pavilion in place of the G2 Pavilion, a 24,000-square-foot enclosed building for meeting and classroom space that the BPDA approved in 2015. The new structure would be used for informal gatherings and events.