About-face at Harvard A push is on to make the portraits on the
walls — white men, almost all — reflect the diverse face of the
university today CAMBRIDGE — The faces peer out, unsmiling, from
the gilded frames lining the sea-green walls of the faculty room
in Harvard’s historic University Hall. Some are mustachioed, a
few bespectacled. They’re dressed in three-piece suits or
cloaked in robes, sporting cravats or bow ties. In this ornate
meeting room adorned with crystal chandeliers, Greek columns,
and Oriental carpets hang images of Harvard’s most venerable
figures — row upon row of stone-faced alumni, professors, and
presidents. They are mostly men; all are white. Of the
approximately 750 oil portraits that grace the libraries, dining
commons, and undergraduate residences of the nation’s oldest
university, roughly 690 were of white men, as of a 2002
inventory by the curator of the university’s portrait
collection. Only two portraits, commissioned in the 1980s and
’90s, were of minorities. The remaining port