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Arthur M. Sackler Museum, as seen from Cambridge Street. 

Arthur M. Sackler Museum [in pink stripes] on Cambridge Historical Commission's Interactive Historic District Map.  

Located at 485 Broadway, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum is the only example of Post-Modern architecture on Harvard’s campus. It is the home of Harvard’s History of Art & Architecture Department, originally called the Fine Arts Department, which will be celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2023. The Sackler building was designed by internationally acclaimed Post-Modern architects James Stirling and Michael Wilford, first opening its doors in 1985. The original purpose behind the construction of the Arthur M. Sackler Museum was directly related to the limitation of storage space the university was encountering across Broadway, at the Fogg Museum on Quincy Street. Due to the rapid expansion and growing relevancy of the university’s collections of Asian, Islamic, and Indian art, by the end of the 1970’s, it was clear that a larger space would be required to accommodate to the size of the growing collection.

Sackler Building, as seen from Broadway.

In an attempt to address the issue of display and storage space, Gleason Professor of Fine Art and Director of the Fogg Museum Seymour Slive requested a donation from Dr. Arthur M. Sackler (psychiatrist, entrepreneur, art collector, philanthropist, and point of contention for those in support of raising awareness of the Opioid epidemic’s origins) that would help the university house “Oriental” art in an added pavilion space that would be constructed behind the Fogg. Eventually, the development of their discussions and a ten-fold increase in funding led to the development of a plan for an entire separate building that would be dedicated to housing the amassing Asian and Ancient Mediterranean collections. Dr. Sackler's donations and contributions to the project's development have been a massive point of protest and social unrest across Harvard undergraduates, graduate students, and even faculty, with a series of "die-in" protests and other efforts pushing towards the institution's renaming of the building responding to Sackler's historic involvement with the project and denouncing Harvard's keeping of the Sackler name.

Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Exterior Facade.

The exterior of Sackler is clad in brick— a nod to the traditional surroundings of the school’s other buildings surrounding it— but its striped black-and-brick pattern is a striking departure from the simplicity of the monochromatic exteriors of other buildings in the area, most particularly, the Fogg Museum’s blank, red-brick facade. The entrance of the building is thoroughly distinct from the back of the building— an additional departure from the symmetrical traditions of classicism that inspired so many of the other academic buildings near/in Harvard Yard. Two enormous cylinders flank the entrance to the building, and the juxtaposition of these cylinders beside the trapezoid shape of the glass ante-chamber entrance reflect a commitment to the fundamentals of postmodernism. 

Central Staircase of Arthur M. Sackler Museum.

The interior of the Arthur M. Sackler Museum is an equally fascinating and unique addition to Harvard’s campus, and the architectural environment of Harvard Square, with vibrant colors and varying geometric shapes taking up the walls of the building’s intentionally spacious entryway. This entryway unites the entirety of the structure by emphasizing a dramatic central stairway— this stairway acts almost like a spine or vertebrae for the building, which adds a layer of novelty when one takes into consideration the fact that the entrance of the structure as seen from the exterior seems to echo the essential feature placements that would make up a child’s face. 

Entry Facade of Arthur M. Sackler Museum.

In 2019, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum finalized an extensive 18-month restoration project that included the construction of 40+ faculty offices, design studios, state-of-the-art classrooms and art-making spaces, and a below-ground lecture hall with advanced technological capabilities. The building is currently on Harvard’s list of “Notable Interiors”, but is unfortunately not as recognized as it should be on a broader sense by the city of Cambridge, and even by the Harvard community itself. Given the structure’s undeniably relevant history as a landmark for postmodern expansion and development in Harvard Square and in Cambridge as a whole, and its existence as a symbolic reflection of the evolution of Harvard’s History of Art & Architecture Department as the department reaches its sesquicentennial, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum should be granted Landmark status.