Artist David Levine’s The Best New Work is designed to present canonical texts to a wider audience by performing them as personal monologues. Actors will drift through the galleries and open spaces of the Harvard Art Museums, performing their essays as though on an endless loop. The performers’ attitude, delivery, affect, and mood will shift with their location, their audience, and time of day.

First presented by professional actors at REDCAT, a center for contemporary art in Los Angeles, and then at the Princeton University Art Museum and the Harvard Art Museums in 2018, this latest iteration of The Best New Work will be performed at the Harvard Art Museums by students in Levine’s course Performing Criticism. Over two days, students will present works by a range of writers, from Karl Marx to Nikola Tesla to bell hooks.

The performance will take place in various spaces throughout the museums, and performers will include Ja Bahri ’25, Josh Caven ’24, Avery Hansberger ’25, Nkem Ogbuefi ’24, Inseo Yeo ’26, and Rachael Rosko MIT ’24.

Performers will be speaking aloud to themselves or to whoever might be nearby as they move through the museums. Guests are welcome to listen to and wander with the student performers as they explore the museums through their chosen text.

Additional details about the course and the texts being performed are available at the information desk in the courtyard.