No Slop, No Second Screen: Animation—the hard-won image

On View June 12 - October 4, 2026

Animation – moving image that is created or mediated frame-by-frame – is a famously (and sometimes fetishistically) laborious, time-intensive process. It demands our undivided attention.

This exhibition and associated screenings showcase work by Harvard students, faculty and visiting artists. Animation at Harvard started with a focus on materials, and the hand-made has always been a strong strand of student work, alongside some classes in newer approaches including VR and coding.

The birth of animation at Harvard goes back to the opening of the Carpenter Center in 1963. Former director Robert Gardner engaged John and Faith Hubley as teachers, the first in a long line of distinguished animators to teach at Harvard. In the mid-1960s, Derek Lamb, via the Film Board of Canada in Montreal, taught and mentored Caroline Leaf and Eli Noyes, both pioneers in their field. Subsequent faculty in animation have included Jan Lenica, George Griffin, Mary Beams, Frank Mouris, David Anderson, Dennis Pies, Janet Perlman, Suzan Pitt, Caroline Leaf, Piotr Dumala, Steven Subotnick, Wendy Tilby, Simon Pummell, and Andreas Hykade.

Animation tends to be a condensed art form, using metamorphosis and metaphor to collide and expand meaning. In this way it resembles poetry. It is a way of expressing and communicating invisible, abstract ideas, allowing us to analyze and deconstruct time and to understand movement as both a liquid flow and a sequence of distinct infinitesimals. While only a few students specialize in animation for their final thesis work, a wide range of students take one or two animation classes during their time at Harvard. Students are encouraged to use the particular demands and rewards of animation to develop and visualize their ideas in any discipline.

This exhibition is organized by Ruth Lingford, Senior Lecturer in Animation in Art, Film, and Visual Arts.