On December 7, Harvard’s Public Culture Project in collaboration with the Presidential Initiative on Interfaith Engagement present Eight Approaches, an eight-piece series of paintings by Cambridge-based artist Joshua Meyer. Layered with thick, accumulating daubs of paint, Meyer’s works explore the relationship between light and time—how we see, remember, change, and try to make meaning. Arranged in a format that evokes film stills, comic-book panels, triptychs, and the eight branches of a chanukiah, the paintings gradually coalesce into a narrative that remains open to multiple interpretations.Meyer’s searching, open-ended practice invites viewers to bring their own stories to the work, weaving together its coincidences, contradictions, and shifting perspectives.
Centered on Chanukah, and its use of light to mark the passage of time, the exhibition will also open into a broader conversation about how dark and light, waiting and hope, endurance and renewal have been understood across different spiritual traditions. Drawing on the Jewish love of questions, parables, and competing truths, the discussion will consider how art and spirituality can hold complexity without resolving it, and give us resources to understand our own hoping and waiting, even in dark times. The Public Culture Project is pleased to host these paintings, along with their maker, for a dynamic conversation around these vital themes.
LOCATION:Thompson Room (Barker Center 110) STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20261207T050000Z DTEND:20261208T045900Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR