Forget that 'Animal House' poster: Harvard lets students rent a Picasso

When Harvard sophomore McKinley Rodriguez's friends come over to her dorm room, they're not looking at an Abbey Road or College Dropout poster and twinkly lights — they're looking at an original print of Pablo Picasso's Goat's Skull on the Table.

For the first semester in seven years, the Ivy-League university is offering its students the chance to hang up famous pieces from renowned artists like Picasso and Andy Warhol in their dorm rooms for $50 per academic year, The Harvard Crimson first reported.

Rodriguez had entered a lottery to walk through a gallery of about 275 prints available for her wall. She won the first time slot, so could snag what she felt was the best of the lot.

“It’s a piece of work that Pablo Picasso has actually touched, so it’s really crazy to think I have that hanging right above my bed,” Rodriguez tells USA Today College. The print, she says, is number 68 of only 150 prints that Picasso has signed.

Jessica Diedalis, a curricular registrar at the museums who’s working with students on the rental program, says that students receive their prints framed with Plexiglas. For damages to the print — which can sometimes happen in college dorm rooms — Diedalis says the student could be charged to repair it.

“Students are instructed to immediately contact me if there is any damage to a print,” she says. “If there is damage to the integrity of the frame, the students are asked to find a flat place to lay the print. An employee from the Harvard Art Museums will visit the student’s room to assess the damage.”

Diedalis also said that students sign rental contracts to make sure they understand the parameters of keeping the artwork for the academic year. She adds that so far, no major damage has been done.

"This close contact fosters an appreciation of art as students learn to care for the works, interpret their meanings, and come to understand the intrinsic power of art," Diedalis says. "I hope that this experience encourages students to develop a lifelong love of art."

Unlike Rodriquez, Harvard sophomore Tyler Frances chose a lesser-known artist. After looking around the makeshift gallery, he found the artwork he wanted in the museum's back room.

Now, Frances says, "the art gets to be displayed as it was meant to."

Frances chose Apollo and Daphne, a 1996 original print from Nona Hershey. The piece reminded him of a trip he'd made to Rome. He was at the Galleria Borghese when he saw a Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) life-size sculpture of the entangled Greek god and nymph entangled, a statue based on a Greek myth.

"Obviously I'm not going to have a Bernini statue in my room, but having a print of that in a more modern and relatable context is pretty fantastic, I think," Frances says.

Harvard first rolled out the art rental program in 1972 following an anonymous donation to one of the museums. The program took a hiatus seven years ago while the museums were being renovated. This year, less than half of the college’s 275 available prints were rented, the Crimson reported.

Diedalis says that the artwork is "constantly refreshed."

For example, while some pieces from artists including  Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Edward Ruscha and Frank Stella have been moved to permanent collections in the museums, "new prints are purchased and added to the collection."

The most popular artwork she says, are from artists including Picasso, Warhol, Josef Albers and Joan Miró. Honoré-Victorin Daumier and Eugène Delacroix have also been rented.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Williams College also offer similar programs. MIT does not charge students — and hasn't since the program began in 1969 — to rent one of its 600 available pieces, according to the school's website.

Williams offers a variety of artwork, from a Paul Cézanne print from 1873 to a 2010 piece from Mamma Andersson and Jockum Nordström. The school also doesn't make students pay a fee, its website says.

Ryan Lasker is a student at George Washington University and a fall 2015 Collegiate Correspondent.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.