Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum Is Harvard University at Its Best

It had been more than a year since I’d been to the Fogg, Harvard’s main art museum, so, with Harvard in the news, and with me in Boston, I visited on Wednesday. President Trump predicted last week that a “mind-bogglingly historic” deal with Harvard was in the works in which, I hope, our oldest university would renounce and reform its illegal, race-based admissions and hiring systems and squelch a gross bout of campus antisemitism.

Color me not only skeptical but incredulous. Harvard is too hubristic, too fat and prosperous, too insular, too aloof, and too dogmatic to admit that it’s erred and to change its ways, except in the most performative, transitory way. More on the MBD — Mind-Boggling Deal — later but, first and foremost, I saw two subtly splendid exhibitions at the Fogg. At rotten-to-the-core Harvard, the Fogg is still the best of the best.

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Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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It had been more than a year since I’d been to the Fogg, Harvard’s main art museum, so, with Harvard in the news, and with me in Boston, I visited on Wednesday. President Trump predicted last week that a “mind-bogglingly historic” deal with Harvard was in the works in which, I hope, our oldest university would renounce and reform its illegal, race-based admissions and hiring systems and squelch a gross bout of campus antisemitism.

Color me not only skeptical but incredulous. Harvard is too hubristic, too fat and prosperous, too insular, too aloof, and too dogmatic to admit that it’s erred and to change its ways, except in the most performative, transitory way. More on the MBD — Mind-Boggling Deal — later but, first and foremost, I saw two subtly splendid exhibitions at the Fogg. At rotten-to-the-core Harvard, the Fogg is still the best of the best.