Harvard Art Museums exhibition explores migration and belonging
On a recent afternoon, two visitors who know what it means to leave home took in a new exhibit at the Harvard Art Museums, paying particular attention to a work playing on a loop in a black-box theater erected specifically for the show. In the short film “Remains,” by Northern Ireland artist Willie Doherty, a voice speaks as stark images cross the screen: a burning car; a wind-swept, abandoned lot; a gloomy sky. “It has become a distant memory, taken on the characteristics of a dream. At times I am unsure if it really happened at all,” says the unseen narrator of the brutal kneecappings carried out by the para militants who policed Northern Ireland’s streets during The Troubles, the sectarian conflict between loyalists who wanted to remain in the United Kingdom and republicans eager to have the country join the Republic of Ireland. For Harvard Divinity School Dean David Hempton and...