Thinking outside the gilded frame
Hanging in plastic sleeves from thin metal chains against a concrete wall, Bettina Burch’s portraits of faculty, staff, and students look more like oversize employee badges dangling from lanyards than the gilded-frame portraits of distinguished academics and benefactors that usually grace Harvard’s hallowed halls. But in a sun-drenched corner of the Monroe C. Gutman Library, Burch’s colorful, playful paintings have turned Harvard portraiture — a tradition with rather strict rules of succession — into a democracy. “I wanted to take the idea and reinvent it,” she explained. “You have people up there who would have never been hung on a wall at Harvard. That shifts their reality and how they feel about themselves. It sort of turns it on its head.” Then again, Burch is good at stretching the creative possibilities of the seemingly well-defined. An artist by nature, she took a job in Harvard’s yard operations and carved it into a role...