Connection: Visual Arts at Harvard

CONNECTION was launched in 1963 by graduate students of the GSD as a forum for voices from the GSD, the Department of Fine Arts, and the Visual Arts Center (Carpenter Center). The mimeographed first issue —initially published biweekly— outlined its aims: to “stimulate involvement with issues of importance, breakdown barriers between the schools and departments, provide a current review of visual arts activities in the Boston area.” Charles Jencks, motivated by creating critical debate, served as the editor of the first eleven issues and was instrumental in establishing an ambitious publishing schedule that was attuned to the intellectual energy, political aspirations, and social upheavals of the 1960s.

Collaboration at this time extended beyond Robinson Hall to embrace the visual arts, understood as a closely related field of inquiry to the design disciplines engaged with the physical environment. Reflecting this broadened he journal not only proposed improvements to the jury system and the inclusion of courses in painting and sculpture, but also sought to situate students within the cultural life of the city through reviews of exhibitions, lectures, and events. This outward looking orientation coincided with the landing of the Carpenter Center by Le Corbusier on Quincy Street, which was the subject of an essay by Eduard Sekler published in one of the early issues, alongside Hideo Sasaki’s outline of a program foe landscape architecture, organized around five interrelated threads of instruction—design, construction, history and theory, planting, and drawing— whose content and connections were represented in graphic form.

The journal was deliberately polemical, exemplified by Jencks’ editorials such as “Specialization and Dyspepsia”, “GSD Juries Judged”,“Vacuum at the Top”,“Exhortation to the Unreasonable Planner”, and “Polar Attitudes in Architecture.” As the journal became more established, its scope expanded to include contributions from beyond the student body and, at times, beyond Harvard, with essays and commentary by others such as Jerzy Soltan, Marcel Breuer, Naum Gabo, Denise Scott-Brown, Gordon Cullen, John Cage. Special issues addressed broader topical concerns, including environmental design education, architectural theory and criticism, and urban housing and high density living. Italso became the venue to publish the Gropius Lectures.

For the final issue, produced in April 1969, Alex Tzonis joined as guest editor and, as he noted, was “put together by a group of friends.” Reflecting on the cultural and political climate, he recalled: “It was only four years ago that one of the most prominent architectural historians declared —during a symposium at Yale dedicated to urban aesthetics— that ours were times of mild manifestos and that revolutions were over. Four years later, revolts and confrontations are a common phenomenon in both cities and universities.” The issue included a visual record of the student protests and clashes with police at Harvard that spring, its back cover depicting a violent image of a student in Marimekko pants thrown to the ground surrounded by baton-wielding police officers. This marked the last edition of Connection.