Trips Places Foods Stories Newsletters
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...

No search results found for
“”

Make sure words are spelled correctly.

Try searching for a travel destination.

Places near me Random place

Popular Destinations

  • Paris
  • London
  • New York
  • Berlin
  • Rome
  • Los Angeles
Trips Places Foods Stories Newsletters
Sign In Join
Places near me Random place
All the United States Massachusetts Cambridge Forbes Pigment Collection
AO Edited

Forbes Pigment Collection

The thousands of shades on display — some toxic, others impossibly rare — are a library of more than just color.

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Added By
Sarah Brumble
Email
Been Here
Want to go
Added to list
CAPTION
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Shades of black   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Ultramarine   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Mummy brown   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
Forbest Pigment Museum   Cara Giaimo and Lilia Kilburn
The pigment collection from the area on the opposite side of the atrium.   ljrobinson / Atlas Obscura User
Forbes Pigment Collection seen from across the Atrium   FrancoAmerican / Atlas Obscura User
Been Here
Want to go
Added to list

About

Begun in the early 20th century by Edward Waldo Forbes, director of the Fogg Art Museum from 1909 to 1944, the Forbes Pigment Collection is housed under the greater umbrella of the Harvard Art Museums — the United States' oldest fine arts research, training, and conservation facility.

Stored behind glass on the fourth floor of the Museums facility in a "staff only" area, the specimens belong to the Straus Center for Conservation and Preservation, which has amassed over 3,600 catalogued pigment samples, binding media, and historical scientific equipment in total. Scientists and art historians tap into the collection in order to verify the origins of questionable paintings up for auction, or work to identify the key compounds of ancient colors in order to better preserve cultural masterpieces for generations to come.

Though growing all the time, today's Forbes Pigment Collection comprises a technicolor array of 2,500 samples, arranged most pleasingly by color. Displayed in little jars of sorts, the pigments mimic artists' color wheels in 3D, morphing from purple to red to yellow to blue and back to purple again along the cases' shelves. 

Picking highlights from the collection is a nigh impossible task, as generations of evolving taste and fashion appear side-by-side within the collection. A few perennially fascinating favorites include the vial of bona fide "royal purple," whose insanely expensive and vibrant color comes from a sea snail. The difficulty of obtaining the snails prohibited anyone outside the Byzantine court from donning this finery (first for fiscal reasons, then later due to social stratification). Similarly prized for its rarity is the "ultra marine" used in medieval paintings, whose brilliant blue hues were wrought from a precise extraction process of Afghan lapis lazuli.

Then there's the doom contingent of pigments, which hold their own unique appeal. This includes the likes of "mummy brown," popular in European painting in the 18th and 19th centuries, that was literally made of "ground-up ancient Egyptians and their pets." If actual dead things don't spark an appreciation for the ephemerality of beauty, perhaps an "emerald green" favored by household painters for centuries, and once employed by van Gogh is more appealing; though cheap to produce and purchase, its colorless fumes could prove deadly to those using it. Similarly, the highly toxic "realgar," whose jar is scrawled with POISON, gets its bright yellowish-green hue from arsenic sulfide reminiscent of the roiling landscape at Ethiopia's uninhabitable Dallol Valley.

If it hasn't become apparent already, the thousands of shades on display at the Forbes Pigment collection are a library of more than just color — though for their beauty alone, that would be enough. Rather, each item on display, carefully curated and preserved by a team of the world's premier conservators, holds its own fascinating story without which the history of the world's art would not exist.

Related Tags

Color Paintings Museums And Collections Art Science Universities

Know Before You Go

The Harvard Art Museums are open 10am to 5pm, daily. The Forbes Pigment Collection is located on the Museums' 4th Level. It is housed in a "staff only" area of the museum but can be seen, from a distance, across the atrium. The rest of the museum's collection makes it worth the trip.

Community Contributors

Added By

littlebrumble

Edited By

Cara Giaimo, ljrobinson, GerhardM, FrancoAmerican...

  • Cara Giaimo
  • ljrobinson
  • GerhardM
  • FrancoAmerican
  • Meg

Published

June 15, 2016

Edit this listing

Make an Edit
Add Photos
Sources
  • http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/09/a-wall-of-color-a-window-to-the-past/
  • http://magazine.harvardartmuseums.org/article/2013/10/31/pigment-depths-0
  • http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2016/01/harvard-pigment-library/
  • http://www.fastcodesign.com/3058058/the-harvard-vault-that-protects-the-worlds-rarest-colors
  • Catherine Hammond
Forbes Pigment Collection
32 Quincy St
Harvard Art Museums
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138
United States
42.374177, -71.114083
Visit Website
Get Directions

Nearby Places

John Harvard 'Statue of Three Lies'

Cambridge, Massachusetts

miles away

Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments Mark I

Cambridge, Massachusetts

miles away

Clover HSQ

Cambridge, Massachusetts

miles away

Explore the Destination Guide

Photo of Cambridge

Cambridge

Massachusetts

Places 29
Stories 6

Nearby Places

John Harvard 'Statue of Three Lies'

Cambridge, Massachusetts

miles away

Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments Mark I

Cambridge, Massachusetts

miles away

Clover HSQ

Cambridge, Massachusetts

miles away

Explore the Destination Guide

Photo of Cambridge

Cambridge

Massachusetts

Places 29
Stories 6

Related Stories and Lists

21 College and University Museums

List

By Jonathan Carey

Forbes Pigment Collection

Podcast

By The Podcast Team

50 Obscure and Amazing Places to Visit in 2017

List

By Atlas Obscura

Related Places

  • ‘Dividing the Light’ at dusk.

    Claremont, California

    'Dividing the Light'

    This public Skyspace created by artist James Turrell for his alma mater puts on a show every day at sunrise and sunset.

  • Courtesy National Gallery of Art

    Washington, D.C.

    'Ginevra de’ Benci' Portrait

    The only Leonardo Da Vinci painting in the Western Hemisphere.

  • Works by South Carolinian artist, Jonathan Green.

    Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

    Franklin G. Burroughs - Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum

    This Myrtle Beach art museum features a rotating display of pieces by artists from James Audubon to Frank Lloyd Wright, but it’s their collection of Southern works that truly impresses.

  • Last Supper Museum

    Douglas, Arizona

    Last Supper Museum Art & Music Center

    With more than 2,000 pieces, this is world's largest collection of artwork inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's 'The Last Supper.'

  • Groningen, Netherlands

    Groningen University Museum

    Preserving the research tools, unexpected inventions, and odd collections of generations of college professors.

  • Two ichthyosaur skull replicas on the fourth floor just outside the main museum.

    Middletown, Connecticut

    Joe Webb Peoples Museum

    A small museum packed with specimens from important fossil sites and minerals from historical pegmatite quarries.

  • The museum entrance.

    Mexico City, Mexico

    Museo Dolores Olmedo

    This extraordinary art museum is like a secret world on the edge of Mexico City.

  • Camilo Egas Mural at The New School.

    New York, New York

    Camilo Egas Mural at the New School

    After surviving abandonment, this powerful Latin American mural is alive again.

Aerial image of Vietnam, displaying the picturesque rice terraces, characterized by their layered, verdant fields.
Atlas Obscura Membership

Become an Atlas Obscura Member


Join our community of curious explorers.

Become a Member

Get Our Email Newsletter

Follow Us

Facebook YouTube TikTok Instagram Pinterest RSS Feed

Get the app

Download the App
Download on the Apple App Store Get it on Google Play
  • All Places
  • Latest Places
  • Most Popular
  • Places to Eat
  • Random
  • Nearby
  • Add a Place
  • Stories
  • Food & Drink
  • Itineraries
  • Lists
  • Video
  • Podcast
  • Newsletters
  • All Trips
  • Family Trip
  • Food & Drink
  • History & Culture
  • Wildlife & Nature
  • FAQ
  • Membership
  • Feedback & Ideas
  • Community Guidelines
  • Product Blog
  • Unique Gifts
  • Work With Us
  • About
  • FAQ
  • Advertise With Us
  • Advertising Guidelines
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy
  • Terms of Use
Atlas Obscura

© 2025 Atlas Obscura. All Rights Reserved.