On Elite Campuses, an Arts Race

By James S. Russel. Closed for six years, the Harvard Art Museums reopen here Sunday after a radical overhaul by the architect Renzo Piano. He saved only the shell of the chaste, red-brick Fogg Museum and its interior courtyard, extending it upward in sheets of glass and elegant trusswork. Galleries wrap the new public space, but so do a materials lab, an art-conservation suite and a study center, where students, faculty and visitors can learn from the collection of 250,000 objects. More...