Call to Artists

"The Night Exhibition of Holography"
December 08 – March 09
The MIT Museum
Submission deadline: 31 August 2008

The MIT Museum

The MIT Museum is expanding to better realize its mission of engaging the broader community with MIT’s research. The first stage in the physical expansion of the Museum has been realized: the Mark Epstein Innovation Gallery opened 29 September 2007, nearly 6000 square feet of high-profile space on Massachusetts Avenue. Since the opening of the Innovation Gallery, it has quickly grown to be a forum, an information source, a window on MIT and a showcase.

The MIT Museum has the largest and most comprehensive collection of holograms in the world. Historic holograms in the collection include the first reflection holograms, the first laser transmission hologram and the first white light transmission hologram. Artworks by pioneers and current leaders in the field make up a significant part of the collection, representing the history and manifold strength of holography as an artistic medium. In addition to holograms, the collection includes the archives of New York's Museum of Holography (MOH), as well as photographs, slides, films, videotapes, audiotapes, and a research library of holography-related publications.

The MIT Museum continues to build upon the collections acquired from the MOH in 1993 and to support the advancement of holography and opportunities for public engagement with and understanding of holography through the Museum’s Holography and Spatial Imaging Initiative.

For more information on the MIT Museum’s holography collection and activities, see: http://web.mit.edu/museum/collections/holography.html

"The Night Exhibition”

In 1972 a laser transmission hologram 18" x24" appeared in the window of Cartier Jewelers in New York City. The piece presented a jeweled necklace dangling from a hand reaching out over the sidewalk of Fifth Avenue, astonishing, intriguing—even frightening—passersby.

"Hand in Jewels” was created for Cartier by Robert Schinella and the McDonnell Douglas Electronics Company. The piece and its presentation represent a significant, early encounter between holography and the public that challenged people, sparked the imagination and raised holography in the collective consciousness.

"The Night Exhibition” reflects the Museum’s commitment to fostering and presenting holography as a contemporary cultural medium. The floor-to-ceiling windows of the MIT Museum’s Innovation Gallery, right on the main thoroughfare of Cambridge, Massachusetts Avenue, present an opportunity to recognize and build upon “Hand in Jewels” as a work that advances holography into the public sphere and the cultural imagination.

Call to Artists

The MIT Museum extends a call to the international holography community for works that demonstrate recent technical and artistic advancements and communicate the promise of holography as a cultural medium in content and form. The Museum will select up to six works for "The Night Exhibition”.

Selected pieces will be displayed in the Innovation Gallery windows. The optical dynamics of transmission holography make it an ideal medium for extending the Museum’s offerings beyond normal open hours and the material confines of the Innovation Gallery. Through the run of the show, the works will be visible from outside the Gallery, on the street and sidewalks, every evening from nightfall to 2AM. The exhibition will be a bright, evocative, urban-scale offering of light through the nights of winter and will re-ignite holography in the public imagination as a medium of expression and a vehicle of communication.

Selection Criteria and Process

The purpose of this exhibition is to excite and inform the public imagination about the future of holographic art. The call is directed to mid-career artists whose works demonstrate, through a combination of artistic and technical innovation, the potential of holography as a medium of cultural significance and social scale. Competitive works will meet the technical requirements of the exhibition and expand the collective concept of holography by engaging architecture, public space and contemporary social discourse.

A specially appointed Advisory Committee will review all submitted art works, and make recommendations to the Director of the MIT Museum concerning the works that should be accepted for inclusion in "The Night Exhibition”. Criteria used in the selection process will include artistic, technical and practical considerations. The Director of the Museum will review these recommendations with Museum staff before reaching a final decision about the art works to be included in the exhibition. The Museum’s decision on the selection of art works will be final.

For project details, site information and submission guidelines, see:
http://web.mit.edu/museum/collections/nightexhibition/information.html

For on-line proposal submission, see:
http://web.mit.edu/museum/collections/nightexhibition/nightexhibitionform.html