SAMANTHA FRIEDMAN: Lincoln Kirstein was an undergraduate at Harvard from 1926 to 1930. And as a very precocious student there, he founded two institutions devoted to what was then contemporary art.
JODI HAUPTMAN: This group of archival materials and artwork relates to those two endeavors: the literary journal, Hound and Horn, and the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art.
SAMANTHA FRIEDMAN: Already you see a sense of interdisciplinary thinking in the work, whether it’s a depiction by Paul Klee of an actor’s mask or designs for the theater, whether it’s photography, printmaking, architecture.
JODI HAUPTMAN: And Kirstein himself talks about not being bound by categories. So that kind of expansive view of what art could be was there from the very beginning.
SAMANTHA FRIEDMAN: And in both Hound and Horn and the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art we see the seeds of the very artists and themes and ideas that would preoccupy Kirstein throughout his life and his career.
JODI HAUPTMAN: I think one of the things that we shouldn't forget as we look at these materials is that Lincoln was very much a student, and you really see that in the diaries he kept during those years. So he'll describe reaching out to famous and eminent writers and artists and critics to get them to join in his endeavors, but at the same time he talks about needing to do his homework, his German or his Dante, and so he's juggling both of these things.