TUESDAY 6 JANUARY 2015 • [email protected] • www.thepeninsulaqatar.com • 4455 7741 inside Hobbit takes CAMPUS third straight • MES Indian School organises win at box Ganit week office P | 4 P | 8-9 COMMUNITY • Tareq crowned winner of Bangladeshi musical reality show P | 5 At Harvard, three art museums have now been united in one new building and RECIPE CONTEST everything about the building and the • newly installed galleries expresses its Send in your best recipe and win a mission as a teaching museum. dinner voucher for two P | 6 HEALTH • Modern standup desks coax office workers back on their feet P | 11 TECHNOLOGY • Slave to the Charger Harvard’s • App of the day P | 12 teaching LEARN ARABIC • Learn commonly used Arabic words museums and their meanings P | 13 2 PLUS | TUESDAY 6 JANUARY 2015 COVER STORY Much to learn from Harvard’s melding of art museums An aerial view of the new building, with the Carpenter Center at bottom right. By Philip Kennicott conservation and study facilities. From the outside, it is not one of Piano's ne might think that all art more elegant structures, but from the museums are in the business inside, the Italian architect, who has of teaching, but the "teaching built so many museum additions in the Omuseum" is a particular sub- past decade, has managed a deft fusion category of the form, and for the most of the institution's myriad functions, part limited to academic campuses. in a structure that doesn't feel cobbled A teaching museum self-consciously together but organically conceived and forthrightly embraces the idea from the beginning. that everyone should know something For that, due credit should be about art and that knowledge of art is given to the leaders of the Harvard fundamental to knowledge of the world. Art Museums, who obviously had a And there may be a subtle nuance clear sense of the role they wanted in the word "teaching" as opposed the facility to play in the broader to "education." Most museums have academic life of the university. It's education departments, but a teaching easy to talk about "breaking down museum conceives of the process barriers" between disciplines and more actively, led by authoritative academic departments and to bemoan experts who are comfortable with the the silos and territoriality of academic structural inequities of the student- life. And it's relatively easy to blow up teacher dynamic. those silos and disrupt the embedded At Harvard, three art museums habits of an institution. Much more have now been united in one new difficult is to do both in a way that building, designed by Renzo Piano, coaxes a new coherence out of the and everything about the building resulting mess. The happy surprise (which opened in November), and the of the new museum, which reopened newly installed galleries, expresses its after six years of partial or total mission as a teaching museum. The closure, is how smartly it handles A gallery with sculptures museums are now united around the the presentation of art, how easy it from the Busch-Reisinger central courtyard of the original Fogg makes it for the curious visitor to collection. Museum, but with space added above learn something in a meaningful, and below for classrooms, auditoriums, efficient way. PLUS | TUESDAY 6 JANUARY 2015 3 or useful. Worse, along Broadway, the new addition puts a barricade wall to the city of Cambridge. But inside, where gallery space has increased by 40 percent, the experi- ence of the museum itself is entirely satisfying. On the ground floor, the museum connects in a more welcom- ing way to the world outside, through the east and west sides of the court- yard, which is public space and can be enjoyed without purchasing admission. The public also has access to the cafe and gift shop. But the essence of the experience is the collection itself, which is wonderfully rich and diverse, and presented in a way markedly different than most museums today. It puts one in the position of being a student of art, rather than simply an audience member or passive spectator. It's remarkable how that slight The museum’s Straus Center for distinction — between an active and Conservation and Technical Studies. focused curiosity and the general, free- floating curiosity of the usual museum visitor — changes the entire sense of The collection now unites what The building, topped by a glass for the Visual Arts, by connecting to the institution. Museums educators were once three distinct entities — pyramidal form, is comfortably arrayed its dramatic flying walkway. Although from the larger world should take note. the Fogg, which was the oldest and around the arches of the old courtyard. clad in wood — a light-gray Alaskan Teaching museums should be the norm, most traditional collection, with a The basics of the collection's broad yellow cedar — the boxy forms of the not the exception. WP-Bloomberg focus on Western painting, sculpture divisions are maintained with separate new addition feel more industrial, like and decorative arts; the 1903 Busch- galleries, including some of the most a soft-textured concrete rather than Reisinger Museum, which was particu- appealing, devoted to 20th-century and organic material. But its relation- larly strong on northern European, and contemporary art, on the ground floor. ship to the Carpenter Center — the especially German, art; and the Arthur Two small breakout spaces, one given only building by Corbusier in North The building, topped by M Sackler Museum, which has a world- over to Bernini, another a meditative America — feels as if it was determined a glass pyramidal form, class collection of Asian art. But while space with work by Chinese artist from the inside out. From some gal- the collections are now joined, they Zhan Wang, offer an internal escape leries, windows frame picture-perfect is comfortably arrayed have not been scrambled. Some galler- from the museum itself, disconnecting views of the older, rigorously modern- around the arches of the ies blend art from all three, as well as the visitor from the larger program ist structure. But from the outside, old courtyard. The basics from other collections around Harvard. while introducing views to the outside. along Prescott Street, the Piano addi- But the result is a careful, targeted jux- The museum has been integrated tion creates an awkward courtyard- of the collection’s broad taposition of material, rather than an with the university's iconic building like space between the two buildings divisions are maintained impressionist melange. Interspersed by Le Corbusier, the Carpenter Center that doesn't feel particularly inviting with separate galleries, among ancient statues are a Rodin and a Louise Bourgeois, and in a case including some of the most devoted to small sculpture, a Cycladic appealing, devoted to 20th- figure sits near a gem by French-born century and contemporary 19th-century artist Gaston Lachaise. These are surprising but intelligent art, on the ground floor. confrontations, suggesting genuine rather than accidental affinities. The challenge when teaching is to structure knowledge without doing violence to its complexity and hetero- geneity. Classifications by period and national tradition are useful and yet always messy; good teachers know how to erect a framework for knowledge without losing sight of all the details and contradictions that can't be con- tained within it. Several galleries are structured to offer a useful scaffolding, but again, in a targeted way. A room devoted to "Rome and Its Influence in the 17th Century" has some of the museum's most stunning pieces yet also mixes in drawings and prints. Another is self-explanatory: "Ancient Near Eastern Art in the Service of Kings." These thematic groupings are complemented by the occasional broad- stroke treatment of cross-cultural practices or ideas, including an array of busts and sculpted heads from differ- ent historical and geographical origins, and the grouping of three portraits of powerful leaders: George Washington (by Gilbert Stuart), Napoleon (by Jacques-Louis David) and Little Elk The new Harvard Art Museums building. (by Charles Bird King). 4 PLUS | TUESDAY 6 JANUARY 2015 CAMPUS MES Indian School organised GANIT week GANIT Week at MES at a younger age. A large number of students actively (Mathematics Week) to commemorate the Birth participated in the competitions and the winners were Anniversary of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a renowned Junior Sections of the school. A week long celebra- awarded with certificate of merit. “It was indeed a Mathematician of India, recently. The event was tion witnessed competitions such as essay writing, remarkable experience for the students as well as organised in line with CBSE to promote the Growing poster making, poster designing, origami and math- teachers. The range of competitions held over the Aptitude in Numerical Innovations and Training ematics quiz. A power point presentation was also week definitely increased and encouraged the interest (GANIT) among students, at Boys’, Girls’, CBSE-i and prepared by the students to “promote Mathematics” for Mathematics,” remarked Principal, Sasidharan A P. Teachers with Qatar University and Total officials. Schoolteachers give positive feedback on Total-QU workshop ollowing the success of the 1st lecture highlighted important oil and Director of the Total Research Center development of a knowledge-based Fworkshop on the oil and gas gas assets in Qatar and shared stra- Qatar, located in Qatar Science and economy, in support of the Qatar industry which was recently held, tegic ideas related to the petroleum Technology Park (QSTP). National Vision 2030.” Total and Qatar University (QU) industry in Qatar. In his remarks, Dr Julien said: “It Dr Zayed noted that it is impor- organised a second similar workshop The workshop was a part of a series is our pleasure to welcome independ- tant for QU to remain in close contact which was attended by over twenty conducted by Qatar Energy Education ent Qatari school teachers and share with the energy industry in Qatar.