The arts at MIT are a fundamental component of MIT's curriculum and community, reflecting and enhancing the Institute's creativity, innovation, and excellence while advancing the self-discovery, problem-solving, and collaborative skills needed by leaders meeting the challenges of the 21st century.
More than half of all MIT undergraduates enroll in arts courses each year—over a third of them in music classes—and many major or minor in arts-related subjects. MIT's arts faculty includes eminent artists such as the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Harbison, writers Alan Lightman and Junot Diaz, video and performance artist Joan Jonas, and conceptual artist Krzysztof Wodiczko.
A flourishing Artist-in-Residence Program complements the curriculum, allowing students to work with acclaimed visiting artists like novelist Margaret Atwood, poet and novelist Chris Abani, composer Tan Dun, cartoonist Art Spiegelman, interdisciplinary artist and writer Coco Fusco, visual artist Cai Guo-Qiang, action architect Elizabeth Streb, filmmaker Michel Gondry, graffiti artists Tats Cru, and architect/engineer/artist Santiago Calatrava.
Each year MIT's 62 performing groups and outside artists present over 300 music, theater, and dance events. Productions range from chamber music to electronic "hyperinstruments"; from Shakespearean plays to improv comedy; and from ballroom to modern dance. MIT's world music program features Boston's only Balinese gamelan; a Senegalese drumming ensemble; and an acclaimed South Asian performance series.
The Office of the Arts is the central administrative arts headquarters at MIT, established to oversee, coordinate, support, and facilitate arts activities under the direction of the Office of the Associate Provost. The office has three branches: Arts Communication, the Council for the Arts, and Student and Artist-in-Residence Programs. For general information on arts programs and activities at MIT, call the office at 617-253-4003, or stop by Room E15-205. Also be sure to visit Arts at MIT at http://web.mit.edu/arts/.
There are many programs helping students find community in the arts. Freshman seminars led by MIT arts faculty and staff encourage participants to discover the arts resources at MIT and in the Boston area and share their art experience with one another through an Arts Share and hands-on workshops. The Arts Scholars Program enables students who are active in the arts to meet and converse at informal dinners and excursions and opens opportunities for them to collaborate in workshops or on independent projects. The Art Rep Program is a network of students in each dorm, living group, and graduate department linking students to arts events at MIT through weekly communications. The Grad Arts Forum encourages interdisciplinary communication among graduate students in the arts through a series of forums centered on themes connecting their artwork. Promoting the Arts Through Design, a seminar, provides students with a hands-on opportunity to learn design through the completion of a project for a local nonprofit community arts organization client. Also available through Student Programs are the annual mural and origami competitions.
MIT students enjoy a wealth of outstanding arts and cultural events available in the greater Boston area. Through programs run by MIT's Council for the Arts, MIT students are eligible for free tickets to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Chamber Music Society, Boston Secession, Collage New Music, and Boston Modern Orchestra Project, as well as free admission to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, the Photographic Resource Center, Harvard's art museums, and other cultural events.
MIT encourages the dreams and talents of the MIT community through arts-related grants and fellowships. Through the Council for the Arts' Grants Program, students, faculty, and staff may apply for funding for arts projects in all disciplines; grants range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars.
Dance activities at MIT are sponsored by the Folk Dance Club, Tech Squares, Ballroom Dancing Club, Dance Troupe, and various international student groups, providing regular opportunities for dancers at all levels of ability. Access their websites via http://web.mit.edu/arts/dance/.
Just as MIT pushes the frontiers of scientific and intellectual inquiry, the mission of the List Visual Arts Center is to explore contemporary art in all media. Each year, the center presents a challenging exhibition program that looks beyond art's traditional aesthetic functions to examine the cultural, social, political, scientific, or economic contexts that inform the work. Exhibitions are presented in three galleries on the first floor of the I. M. Pei-designed Wiesner Building (Building E15), the Media Test Wall in the Whitaker Building (Building 56), and the Dean's Gallery in the Sloan School. All are free and open to the public. Nationally distributed catalogues, gallery talks by artists, critics, and curators, symposia, and films accompany the exhibitions.
The List Center also manages MIT's permanent collection of artworks, including a student loan program that enables students to borrow original works of arts, such as prints and photographs, for up to a year, and a sizable collection of paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, and photos sited throughout the MIT campus.
For more information about the List Center's exhibitions and programs, call 617-253-4400, or visit http://web.mit.edu/lvac/.
The MIT Museum's broad range of exhibitions and programs for children and adults provides unique public access to what the Institute has always done best: the application of innovative research to the solution of real-world problems. On a yearly basis, over 80,000 people visit the museum and its galleries.
With the opening of a new gallery and program space in September 2007, the MIT Museum offers interactive exhibitions about the life sciences, engineering, and ocean literacy, whichcomplement the permanent exhibitions on the history of artificial intelligence at MIT, the work of Harold Edgerton, and the ever-popular displays of holograms and historical artifacts.
In addition to the main collection at 265 Massachusetts Avenue, the MIT Museum oversees the Hart Nautical Gallery in Building 5 and the Compton Gallery in Building 10. Visit http://web.mit.edu/museum/ for an in-depth look at the museum's collections, exhibitions, public programs, and services to the community.
MIT's Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies offers courses in fiction, poetry, playwriting, and science and nature writing taught by award-winning faculty. The Writers Series, Poetry@MIT series, and the Artist-in-Residence Program frequently present readings and lectures by renowned writers. Students may contribute their own writings to a variety of campus publications, and compete for annual writing prizes awarded in several categories. For more information, call 617-253-7894, or visit http://web.mit.edu/lit/www/, http://web.mit.edu/humanistic/www/, and http://web.mit.edu/arts/literaryarts/.
MIT's Media Lab is a world-renowned center of media-related research. Students and faculty at the lab explore convergent communications technologies through pioneering work in disciplines such as computer graphics, design, interactive cinema, narrative, cognition and learning, electronic music, and holography. For more information, visit http://web.mit.edu/arts/mediaarts/.
MIT's music faculty includes internationally acclaimed composers, performers, and musicologists. Students can take private lessons with departmental support, music classes in composition and history, or participate in faculty-led performance ensembles at every level, from beginning to advanced. Faculty-led ensembles include the MIT Symphony Orchestra, Wind Ensemble, Festival Jazz Ensemble, Chamber Music Society, Concert Choir, Chamber Chorus, Gamelan Galak-Tika, and Rambax MIT (a Senegalese drumming ensemble); there are many student-directed ensembles and a capella groups on campus as well. Concerts are also presented as part of the MIT Faculty, Affiliated Artists, Guest Artists, and Thursday Noon Chapel series, and artists-in-residence of major national and international stature frequently come to MIT to perform and interact with students in and out of the classroom. For more information call 617-253-3210, or visit http://web.mit.edu/arts/music/.
The Student Art Association offers classes and facilities for many visual arts activities, including ceramics, photography, painting, drawing, and sculpting. For more information, call 617-253-7019, or visit http://web.mit.edu/saa/.
MIT's programs in theater arts offer opportunities for serious study and training in acting, directing, playwriting, stagecraft, and design. Classes are small, and students work directly with renowned faculty and guest artists, or initiate independent student workshop productions. A wide variety of theatrical performances are presented by MIT Dramashop, the co-curricular student-producing group of MIT Theater Arts. Extracurricular student organizations such as Shakespeare Ensemble, Musical Theatre Guild, Gilbert & Sullivan Players, and the improv group Roadkill Buffet offer additional performance and production experiences.
An annual Theater Arts Open House in early September allows students to meet the people who produce theater events and to learn more about opportunities to get involved in various productions. For more information, call 617-253-2877, or visit http://web.mit.edu/arts/theater/.
From large-scale public art to film and photography, the visual arts are celebrated in innovative ways at MIT. Excellent opportunities exist for members of the MIT community to view and create art in a variety of media (see List Visual Arts Center, MIT Museum, and Student Art Association above). Opportunities for coursework in the visual arts can be found by consulting the Visual Arts Program of the Department of Architecture, the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, and the Comparative Media Studies Program, or visit http://web.mit.edu/arts/visualarts/.