Become a Friend of the MIT Museum

A note from MIT Museum Director, John Durant

As we prepare to bid farewell to our landmark MIT 150 Exhibition, there’s more than a little of the wistfulness one would expect in packing up the largest special exhibition in the MIT Museum’s history. Throughout this exceptional year, however, in which the Museum played a crucial role in MIT’s sesquicentennial, we’ve also been busy preparing for next spring, when we will open another new gallery and two new exhibitions:

The Kurtz Gallery for Photography will be inaugurated by President Hockfield on May 2, 2012 with the opening of An Essential Unity, featuring pioneering photographs taken by Berenice Abbott when she was part of the Physical Sciences Study Committee at MIT in the early 1960s. The Kurtz Gallery will allow the Museum to showcase properly for the first time its rich holdings in photography.

Just prior to the inauguration of the Kurtz Gallery, we shall be launching Rivers of Ice: Vanishing Glaciers of the Himalaya. This is a truly important show about the melting of the vast Himalayan glaciers and its implications, not least for water supply across much of Asia. Rivers of Ice features the stunning photographic work of mountaineer and filmmaker David Breashears, and it marks the Museum’s confident move into a new era of regularly changing special exhibitions.

All of these efforts and more are bolstered by the generosity of the Friends of the MIT Museum. Membership support does amazing things. It reinforces our mission and values, helping to foster the inquisitive spirit and scientific and technological literacy of our visitors. And it helps us cover a lot of ground: architecture, artificial intelligence, gaming, holography, kinetic art, the deep ocean, and much more. Add to that an incredible suite of educational and public programs and the constantly evolving Cambridge Science Festival. If that ever-growing list is any indication, we will continue into 2012 with our usual unchecked energy and enthusiasm, and with the benefit of your renewed support, the MIT Museum will have another remarkable year.

Thank you for being a member at this key moment in our history.

John Durant
Director