Arts & Humanities

This page features Columbia faculty and research related to the arts and humanities, and highlights cultural events happening at Columbia's four campuses. 

A collage of arts and humanities images

A Book About the Links Between Gold and Apartheid in South Africa

Rosalind Morris digs deep via ethnography, history, personal testimony, and political thought to tell the story about the mines.

Columbia University Professor Samuel Freedman
The Art of the Book Deal

How Columbia Journalism School professor Samuel G. Freedman has helped more than 100 students get coveted book contracts.

image of staircase, piano, and flowers
A Long Island home designed by Gideon Mendelson. (Tim Lenz)
How to Revamp Your Home in 2025

Drawing from nature, history, and emerging trends, four alumni interior designers share their decorating wisdom.

Columbia University alum Joan Tower
Bernard Mindich
Joan Tower: An Uncommon Composer

At 86, the composer and pianist is still playing at a fast tempo. 

Exhibitions

Astrolabe, Italy, signed by Bernard Sabeus, 1558; Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Smith Instruments, Columbia University.
Astrolabe, Italy, signed by Bernard Sabeus, 1558; Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Smith Instruments, Columbia University.
Celestial Navigation

This Rare Book and Manuscript Library exhibition combines recent works on paper by Columbia Visual Arts MFA students with materials from the RBML collections.

Gallery shot, GSAPP exhibition, Columbia University,
Photo by Nicholas Knight, courtesy Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP).
Prospecting Ocean

This exhibition at GSAPP's Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery in Buell Hall centers on work by Armin Linke, a multimedia artistic research project that investigates the technocratic entanglement of industry, science, politics, and economics at the frontiers of ocean exploration.  

Photo by Elidor Mëhilli.
Photo by Elidor Mëhilli.
An infinite archive

Since the early 2000s, Elidor Mëhilli has assembled a vast archive on the dramatic transformation of his hometown, Tirana, Albania. This Harriman Institute exhibition encompasses his body of work--photographic series, thousands of documents, ephemera, and found objects. 

More Arts News