Arts & Humanities
The Harvard Forest has a deep history of incorporating environmental literature, photography, and fine art with scientific research to characterize past landscapes, depict future scenarios, and educate a range of audiences.
Presentations and workshops by artists, historians, botanical illustrators, and writers enrich students’ perspectives on landscape and global change. Past collaborations with artists have typically occurred through our Charles Bullard Fellowship program, which is the primary opportunity for formal research fellowships across all topics at Harvard Forest.
Former artists in residence
2016-2017 Bullard Fellow David Buckley Borden is an interdisciplinary artist and designer, collaborating through 2018 with the Forest’s world-class ecologists on boundary-shattering projects involving creative cartography, speculative design, and landscape installation.
In 2013-2014, veteran Seattle Times reporter Lynda Mapes spent a year at the Forest working on a book that tells the story of global change from the perspective of one red oak tree – the “Witness Tree” – at the Harvard Forest. During a subsequent Fellowship (2023-2024), Mapes conducted research for her 2025 book, The Trees are Speaking.
Debby Kaspari, a 2011 Bullard Fellow and the Forest’s first long-term artist-in-residence, explored themes of land use history and ecological legacies. Her residency included workshops, presentations for students and the public, and exchanges with other artists, historians, and scientists.
Collaborations with digital multimedia artist Roberto Mighty include both an art installation and film on the relationship between historical Native Americans and local forests, and several web-based ecological outreach videos.