CAMBRIDGE, MA.- Pierre Huyghe will create a multi-media project for Harvard University as part of an inter-faculty collaboration among the Harvard University Art Museums, the Harvard Design School, and Harvard's Department of Visual and Environmental Studies. Huyghe + Corbusier: Harvard Project will explore Le Corbusier's vision for Harvard's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, the only building in North America designed by the noted architect and home to the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies. The project will premiere at the Carpenter Center on November 18, 2004, and will continue in the building's Sert Gallery through April 17, 2005.

Huyghe + Corbusier: Harvard Project will include multiple components that respond to the design history of the Carpenter Center and its relationship to Harvard:

A "puppet opera" telling the story of Le Corbusier's commission and Huyghe's own work at Harvard, which will feature custom-crafted marionettes of Le Corbusier and others; A temporary architectural extension, designed by Huyghe in collaboration with faculty and students from the Harvard Design School, which will transform the Carpenter Center's covered terrace into a theater for the puppet opera; A new film by Huyghe, based on the puppet opera, which will be screened continuously in the Carpenter Center's Sert Gallery.

Organized by the Fogg Art Museum's Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, the project grew from Huyghe's long-standing interest in Le Corbusier's work and his central role within the history of modern architecture. Huyghe + Corbusier: Harvard Project is the Fogg Art Museum's first single-artist initiative of this scale, and it underscores the Harvard University Art Museums' commitment to the study, teaching, and presentation of modern and contemporary art. The project also furthers the Art Museums' role in fostering interdepartmental collaboration among Harvard scholars.

Huyghe began work on the project two and a half years ago. Over the past year he conducted workshops with students from Harvard's Department of Visual and Environmental Studies and the Harvard Design School. In addition, he undertook a review of Harvard's Le Corbusier archives. Huyghe + Corbusier: Harvard Project further developed from dialogue with project curators Linda Norden, associate curator of contemporary art at the Fogg Art Museum, and Scott Rothkopf, senior editor of Artforum and a Ph.D. candidate in the department of History of Art and Architecture. Through this research and collaboration with Harvard students and scholars, Huyghe gained insight into the radical nature of the Carpenter Center's architecture in the context of the greater University campus. While exploring Le Corbusier's designs and working with the students at the Center, Huyghe also experienced the space as a laboratory for creativity and a catalyst for the making and exploration of art at Harvard.

"This interdisciplinary initiative adds a special dimension to the experiences Harvard students have with projects marked by great creative energy and intensive research," said Thomas Lentz, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums. "The Harvard University Art Museums are dedicated not only to presenting modern and contemporary art, but also to teaching and researching these areas according to the Art Museums' great traditions of close interaction with works of art and scholarship. Giving students the opportunity to work directly with a living artist while exploring one of this continent's greatest architectural treasures is a potent 21st century expression of that legacy."