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Art and Law Meet at the Harvard Art Museums

August 18, 2025

Center for Art Law Art and Law at the Harvard Art Museums

About this Event

This virtual tour, led by Hannah Gadway (Center for Art Law Outreach Coordinator, Harvard College ’25, HLS ’28) invited viewers to observe three of the paintings in the Harvard Art Museums’ collections through the art law lens.

The tour explored a few examples of how law serves to protect the interests of artists, art, and collectors. Touching on subjects from “art as evidence” to Nazi-owned art to the legal process involved in giving art to a museum, Hannah examined James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s painting Nocturne in Blue and Silver (c. 1871–72), the Japanese sculpture Prince Shōtoku at Age Two (Kamakura period, datable to about 1292), and Vincent Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin (1888). Hannah will also spoke on how art law has allowed her to build museum literacy at the Harvard Art Museums.