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Envisioning the Arts at MIT

Part 1: Exploring Technology/Science as Art

Part 2: Studying the Arts at MIT

Part 3: Making Art at MIT

Questions & Answers

Professor Alan Brody

Felice Frankel

Todd Siler, PhD '86

Jae-Chol Lee, SM '00

Min-Hank Ho '00

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Student Art Loan Program Lucky students, if they win the annual lottery, can live with one of the 350 framed original prints and works on paper by leading contemporary artists thanks to the List loan program.

Campus Sculpture MIT's outdoor sculptures by international figures such as Alexander Calder, Henry Moore, Louise Nevelson, and Pablo Picasso are on view year-round. Get the List Visual Arts Center's "Art and Architecture at MIT: A Walking Tour of Campus" to guide your tour.

Envisioning the Arts at MIT

Visual art--as a discipline and as an engagement with technology--thrives at MIT. At the List Visual Arts Center, artists are deconstructing the language of architecture. The world's largest collection of holograms lights up the MIT Museum. Hundreds of MIT students take visual arts courses, and many more are involved in creative expressions such as the prize-winning students exhibiting at the Wiesner Art Gallery. Practicing artists find support through the Student Art Association and a staff group, Artists Behind the Desk.

It was not always so. The visual arts arrived, tangibly, at MIT in the 1950s. Before that, Edwin H. Blashfield's murals in Walker Memorial, installed in 1924 and 1930, were about it. The change was spearheaded by President James Killian, who believed MIT students should be able to "engage and come to understand the best of the arts." So, in 1950, Hayden Library opened with MIT's first gallery and program of changing exhibitions, and in 1951 a Permanent Collection began with a gift of 26 paintings and drawings from the Standard Oil Company.

This month, openDOOR explores the progress wrought in the past 50 years:

Exploring Technology/Science as Art
The List Visual Arts Center and the MIT Museum, both with fresh leadership in recent years and growing reputations, are exploring new limits in art, technology, and community engagement.

Studying the Arts at MIT
As students explore the arts in a technological world via the Visual Arts Program and the Media Arts and Sciences Program, they can study with notable artists such as Dennis Adams and Krysztof Wodiczko who both exhibited in the 2000 Whitney Biennial.

Making Art at MIT
After hours in the lab, students and staff are energized by creative engagement in the Glass Lab, the Hobby Shop, Student Art Association courses, or on their own.

*Banner photo courtesy of Felice Frankel. The photo depicts adhesion: a piece of clear tape under a microscope as it is pulled away from a surface.

Museum Loan Network MLN, begun in 1995 by MIT's Office of the Arts, encourages museums across the country to tap an underutilized resource: artworks in storage. It's working nationwide.

Campaign Arts Goals More and more students are drawn to the arts, but many lack appropriate facilities and distinguished teachers. Find out what $25 million can do.

Visual Art Links Quick links to campus arts resources.

MIT Facts--the Arts Get the facts and figures on the arts at MIT.