Courtesy of Katherrin Bilordo

Gallery organizer and Harvard student Katherrin Billordo and her team will host the First Annual Harvard x Yale Art Show this Friday alongside the 140th annual football game. 

The gallery will run from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. in the Winthrop House Library, displaying and selling more than 150 pieces of artwork made by over 100 Yale and Harvard students. Additionally, students will be able to enjoy eight live music performances, snacks and a collaborative mural.

“More than anything I want to focus more on the people — diversity of thought, of experience,” Billordo said. “I want to bring people together. I think that’s the best part of art, is uniting people.”

Galvanized by the community events put on by AnySquared Arts, during her senior year of high school, Billordo organized her first art show with over 65 visual artists and 200 pieces.

Now, two years later, Billordo is championing her fourth formal art show. She wanted to do a multi-school collaboration, and the Yale-Harvard football game seemed to be a good opportunity. The revitalized school spirit, almost-mandatory mingling and celebratory atmosphere already congealed in the event coincided with her hopes for a unifying art show.

While there have historically been mixers in a cappella, comedy, sports, dance and cultural centers, there has been a noticeable lack of space for visual artists, Billordo said. The art show hopes to change that. 

Billordo also hopes that this year’s art show can stoke unity and empathy among the rival schools.

“I hope that it inspires empathy and understanding among people,” said Billordo, “I feel like, right now, we’re living in a very divisive time … now is the best time to make art, to listen to art, to listen to other people and to be open to having your perspective changed.”

Billordo will also contribute some of her own sculptures, photographs and paintings. For her, the act of display is an open invitation for viewers to engage with her on some of the most significant aspects and influences of her life. The traditional impediments and awkwardness of initiating conversation with a stranger dissolve in earnest curiosity.

The show accepted a wide array of mediums, from clothing design to short films, diversifying the media and subject matter of the art, rather than limiting it to a strict theme. 

Additionally, mariachi, punk bands, pianists and singers will play music throughout the night.

Lisa Lin ’26 helped arrange the logistics of the event’s funding and outreach. Her experience directing tech and educational conferences helped her secure and allocate budget from Harvard’s Office of Fine Arts and Winthrop House. This money went towards printing costs, organizing the space and providing food and drink to visitors. 

“Anyone can be an artist. You can learn a lot about yourselves and other people through doing this art show,” Lin said. “It can just be another space … to be able to showcase and to break down that barrier of ‘Hey, my work needs to be some fantastical, $1,000,000 piece in order to go up in any show’ — it can just be, you know, art.”

Behind almost every decision was Lin’s commitment to accessibility. With Yale and Harvard students in the heat of midterms, she wanted to make the space readily available to any artist trying to put their art out there.

The library’s atmosphere will signal a shift away from erudite perfectionism and toward a chiller vibe.

Most people don’t normally have the opportunity to go to art shows. Lin explained that this often means that art experience and criticism are confined to a homogenous crowd at Harvard. Both organizers hope that the Yale-Harvard game will push people outside of the normal bubbles and into the art show.

Viewers can expect to see Lin’s own work at the show. Studying computer science and art, she mainly works in digital painting and concept design. However, since coming to college she has branched out into other mediums like charcoal, graphite and photography.

At this exhibit, Lin is inclined to present art that she “wouldn’t normally show just to get [her] out of [her] comfort zone.” For her, the art show is as much a chance to invite others to share work they normally wouldn’t have as it is to ask herself to do the same. 

The art show is an opportunity for students like Rodrick Howard ’25 to expand the boundaries of “fine art.”

“I want my artwork to inspire people and make them question what it means for an object to be considered ‘fine art,’” said Rodrick Howard. “I think viewing the art in person allows viewers to be affected by things like the artwork’s size and other details that might not be captured by a camera.”

Howard specializes in figurative painting, attempting to capture both the surreal and the real. For him, physical space is important to substantively engage and captivate an audience. 

Nikita Ivaniuta ’28 is another artist who will be featured at the upcoming art show. Using charcoal, he creates emotionally and physically large depictions of forlorn faces, bodies in motion and battle. For Ivaniuta, the process is as imperative as the product: he wants his audience to be included in the art’s development.

Both Howard and Ivaniuta expressed excitement about working with Yale students. They hope that the art event can lead to future cross-school collaborations.

“It feels very exciting to work with artists from both Harvard and Yale,” Ivaniuta said, “to see both conceptually and technically which direction their art goes towards and if there’s a distinction between Yale and Harvard artists.” 

RSVP for the gallery here.