Memories and Milestones: Asia and Asians at Harvard

Exhibition at the Harvard University Asia Center
On view from November 2025 to March 2026

Asian Centers Lounge, 1st Floor, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge

Harvard’s connections with Asia reach back over a century and a half, shaping the ways the University has thought about knowledge, culture, and the world beyond its walls. Memories and Milestones invite visitors to pause with these histories—stories of students, scholars, and artists from across Asia whose presence has left a lasting imprint on campus life, and of the many ways Asia itself has been imagined, studied, and encountered at Harvard.

Photographs, letters, and archival fragments open glimpses onto these exchanges: a class in an early language course, a gathering at the Faculty Club, an artist at work, a student writing home. Each speaks to the movement of ideas and people across boundaries and generations, and to the ways those movements have changed Harvard in return.

An interactive timeline extends this conversation. Visitors are invited to add memories, events, and overlooked moments, contributing to a growing record of Harvard’s evolving relationships with Asia—layered, complex, and still unfolding.

Presented in conjunction with the Asia and Asians at Harvard Conference, November 13–14, 2025.