ROBIN KELSEY: Good afternoon.
Good afternoon!
AUDIENCE: Good afternoon.
ROBIN KELSEY: Thank you.
I needed that.
I never teach at 2:00 PM because it's my nap time,
so now you've got me all charged up.
I love Melissa Franklin.
If I were sitting where you are, I would be thinking,
I want to come to Harvard and study physics.
But you can't all study physics because we
don't have that many physics faculty.
So some of you are going to have to study the arts and humanities.
And the arts and humanities aren't as funny as physics.
[CHUCKLING]
No, it's true.
It's really a matter of scale.
Things are very funny when they're cosmically scaled,
or when they're really tiny.
But we sit there at the scale of Samuel Beckett,
where things get very deadly serious.
So if at any point, I get too serious, just
think of one of the hundreds of funny things that Melissa said,
and you can laugh.
One of the reasons we're not funny is we have notes.
We use notes which are not funny, but they're very, very precious.
So-- [CHUCKLES] yeah.
Notes are very precious.
OK.
So today, I am not going to be offering you any answers to important questions.
In fact, I'm just going to pose a few questions.
Harvard is a great university, in my view,
not because it has all the answers, but because the people here
ask important questions, and they work together on coming up with answers.
And the questions I'm going to pose today
are about the future of cultural space.
Now, what do I mean by cultural space?
I mean the museum, the library, the concert hall, the theater,
the movie theater, the dance center, the public park.
I mean those spaces in which we gather to experience culture.
To experience human creativity together.
These spaces are incredibly important in our civic life.
In fact, our governments-- whether local or national--
situate these spaces in the center of our civic geography.
They do that because we are anchored as a people by our culture.
The most well-known and celebrated of our cultural spaces in America--
spaces such as Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum, the New York
Public Library, Disney Hall--
I thought of Disney Hall because of Walt Disney,
but I'm not going to make any jokes about Disney Hall--
the Smithsonian, these spaces are touchstones of national identity.
But our local movie theater, our town public library
are no less central to civic life on a smaller scale.
These places where we gather and we attend to
and honor human creativity, human efforts
to find meaning, beauty, empathy, and understanding
are really essential to our humanity.
Now, I'm showing you an example of a cultural space that's important to me.
I grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Marshall University High School has a kind of elite ring to it.
Don't let that fool you.
There was no university--
except the University of Minnesota, which was nearby--
related to my high school, which was distinctly public.
But I was very, very fortunate in having parents
who took advantage of the cultural riches of Minneapolis and St. Paul,
which are extensive, which is a very fortunate thing.
And in particular, my parents loved to take me to the theater.
And the theater in Minneapolis, from the flagship Guthrie Theater--
are there any people here from Minnesota?
AUDIENCE: Woo!
ROBIN KELSEY: Yeah?
All right.
Good.
All right.
Yeah.
The theater in Minneapolis, from the flagship
Guthrie Theater, to smaller theaters, such as the Mixed Blood
Theater in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood,
near where I grew up, the Penumbra Theater in St. Paul, really fantastic.
So this is where this issue of cultural space
has particular significance to me.
Here.
This is the clicker.
Yes?
No?
MARLYN MCGRATH: Try the other one.
ROBIN KELSEY: What other one?
The duck?
MARLYN MCGRATH: No.
ROBIN KELSEY: Oh.
This.
This?
Oh, OK.
Good.
All right.
But today, cultural spaces are under considerable challenge and strain.
And one reason is probably obvious to you,
which is the rise of digital networks and electronic devices.
Those in charge of our libraries are wondering,
what is a library when our smartphone can bring us
more information and knowledge than thousands of books ever could?
Those in charge of our theaters, movie theaters, and other performance venues
are wondering, how do we get people to come see our shows when so many films
and shows are streaming into our homes?
So for many of these cultural spaces, this is an existential threat.
But even for our cultural spaces such as the art museum that
have an easier time making the case that they are delivering
unique experiences to visitors, patterns of usage
are changing radically in this digital moment.
In particular, the popularity of social media and the selfie
have very much changed the experience of art museums.
And museum directors and staff are scrambling
to negotiate this different way of being in the art museum.
Exhibitions are being arranged to accommodate the making of selfies,
and even new museum spaces are being designed
to accommodate the making of selfies.
Restaurants-- which can be cultural spaces in their own right--
are thinking about questions of lighting and background, and the extent to which
that they can make the culinary offerings more Instagrammable.
[CHUCKLING]
No, I kid you not.
I kid you not.
In addition, cultural tastes and desires are changing.
Many traditional forms of culture require people to sit still,
like you're doing, and pay attention-- as you seem to be doing,
which is fabulous--
for long periods of time to go see the ballet, or the opera, and so forth.
In fact, this particular lecture style-- the kind of TED talk, 10, 15 minutes--
was unheard of 30 years ago.
You would have had to sit through us going on for an hour.
So attention spans.
Demands for interactivity are changing when
people become more accustomed to these fluid and flickering screens,
and with their interactivity.
So this is changing demand in cultural spaces as well.
Although I'm not saying in this that young people don't have the attention
span to go to the opera and so forth.
I actually think a lot of that concern has been overblown.
But nonetheless, these are important considerations.
There is also the exceedingly important issue of inclusion.
Whose culture gets exalted?
Who gets invited and welcomed into our cultural spaces?
Who can afford to buy a ticket?
Many of us are deeply concerned with the urgency
of making our cultural spaces more welcoming to more people.
And I show you a scene from Lin-Manuel Miranda's brilliant musical Hamilton,
which is in fact a very complicated emblem for this issue.
On the one hand, it tells a historical story that principally
involves white men and women.
On the other hand, the casts are predominantly people of color.
On the one hand, it brings a kind of rap or hip hop sensibility
to the mainstream of Broadway.
On the other hand, the ticket prices are so high that unless you're wealthy,
you can't possibly attend without considerable sacrifice.
So these challenges are formidable.
And they have led me to become very interested
in the future of cultural space.
How do we address these challenges?
How do we design cultural spaces for the 21st century?
I've come to this interest in part through becoming--
gasp-- an administrator.
Because I'm really trained as a historian of photography.
So I'm trained at looking at pictures and considering historical evidence.
I have no training in-- well, I have training in law,
but that's kind of accidental.
I don't have training in architectural design and planning.
But I have been brought as an administrator at Harvard
as someone who serves on all too many committees.
I've brought into teams that have designed new cultural spaces here.
So I was part of a team that created a new art
lab across the river officially opening in September,
but it's already being used.
A fabulous new facility for experimentation
in the arts where works in progress are shared with various audiences.
I was part of a team that renovated one of our museum buildings
to add new spaces for art-making, for architectural design,
and for art history.
And I'm currently part of the team that is
working on creating a new home for the American Repertory theater
across the river.
And this is incredibly exciting work.
And I'm incredibly grateful to be a part of it.
It has convinced me that it is very important for Harvard
to revitalize its cultural spaces.
But more important, it has convinced me that the design--
and I mean that conceptually as well as architecturally-- the design
of cultural spaces is one of the most pressing and vital questions
of our time.
Now, why do I say it is vital?
It's vital because it's vital that, as a people,
we are not simply a group of consumers, or a group of users,
or a group of data points.
It is really important that we are bound together
through culture, and through the mutual recognition of the importance
and value of cultural difference.
And I do not believe, as connected as Rob Lue is going to make us--
and I'm sure he's going to make us very connected--
I believe we still need to come together bodily, physically,
into places to experience one another's humanity,
and to experience the power of culture to bring us together.
So to my mind, this is an exceedingly important question.
Now, when I come across what I think is a really interesting new question,
I am reminded again of how great it is to be at Harvard.
And on this occasion, I accidentally had a conversation
with a colleague-- a professor named Jerold Kayden in the Graduate
School of Design.
Turns out he was thinking about these same questions
about the future of cultural space.
And within about an hour scribbling on stray pieces of paper,
we decided that we should really work on this problem together.
And one of the great things about universities
is that they have a tremendous engine of intellectual inquiry.
And that engine is called the classroom.
So this fall, rather belatedly, Jerold and I
put together a general education course on the future of cultural space.
We submitted it at the 11th hour, crossed our fingers,
and fortunately, it was approved.
So we taught it this spring.
It was a course we limited to about 30 students
because it was really an experiment, and we
wanted to create a kind of seminar-like atmosphere.
And each week, we thought about a different cultural space.
One week, the library.
Another week, the museum.
Another week, the public park.
And each week, we brought in a leading expert
in the design or the oversight of such a cultural space.
So some of you may know The Shed opened to enormous publicity in New York City.
Well, Liz Diller, who was the principal architect of The Shed,
came and spoke to our class even as this hubbub was taking place.
And she talked about the fact that The Shed was designed
around the wheels that move this enormous skin backward
and forward so that you can have an enclosed interior space,
or you can have an exterior space.
We had Mitch Silver, who is the head of the New York City park system
come and talk about public parks as cultural spaces,
and the art projects that he is overseeing.
We had Joana Vicente, who is the new executive director of the Toronto
International Film Festival, come to talk
about the future of the movie theater.
We had Rebecca Robertson, who runs the Park Avenue Armory in New York
come and talk about the Armory, which is a regeneration of an obsolete space,
which is a type of cultural space that we were very interested in.
And so these practitioners would come.
They would speak for about 30, 40 minutes.
And then for about an hour and a half, they would be grilled by the students
and by Jerold and me about, what are we to be thinking about as we
design these spaces for the future?
And teaching this class has been exhilarating.
I have to say, I'm sure you have many choices of places to go,
but I don't think that you can teach this course
at pretty much any other institution.
Maybe Yale could pull this off.
But it is incredible, when you invite people to come to Harvard, who comes.
I mean, I said to Jerald, do you really think
Liz Diller is going to come within two weeks of the opening of The Shed
to talk to our class?
And Jerold said, this is Harvard.
She'll come.
And what's great is that--
[APPLAUSE]
I mean, it's a little crazy.
We're so lucky.
We are so fortunate.
And Jerold actually knew this because he sat where you sat once.
He was a Harvard undergraduate, and he started a program called Learning
from Performers, which continues to this day in the Office of the Arts
that brings in the most incredible people.
So he learned as an undergraduate, you invite people to Harvard,
and they come.
So we've just been doing this together.
It's been incredible.
And what we've learned is that there are key issues, dilemmas,
conundra around the designing of spaces for a culture of the future.
And we are so excited to be working on this project.
We are going to be writing it up.
We are going to be continuing to work with some of the students in the class
and building an archive.
And we hope to build a center of research
at Harvard to make sure that we start sharing this information
and opening the conversation around the future of cultural space.
Thanks so much for listening, and please come to Harvard.