Mark Rothko painted a suite of five paintings for Harvard's Holyoke Center penthouse. He painted only two other ensembles (one now at the Tate and the other in the Houston Rothko Chapel). Tests carried out recently at the Center for Conservation and Technical Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, indicated that Rothko had made up his crimson background by mixing synthetic ultramarine and lithol red, a fugitive organic colorant. The distressed reactions to the changed paintings, the unfortunate choice of the high light level display area in 1962-63, the subsequent physical damages and removal from display are chronicled. The paintings will be displayed again for a limited time in 1988 accompanied by a detailed monograph, * 2Mark Rothko's Harvard Murals.*1 (See also <i>AATA</i><b> 26-588</b>.) -- AATA