Massachusetts Institute of Technology / MIT Museum
Building N51 265 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139
Open Daily 10am – 5pm / Closed Major Holidays

The MIT Museum is closed on Monday, May 27 for Memorial Day.

Second Fridays

Activate your weekend!

Jump-start your weekend with the MIT Museum. Get up close and personal with Kismet the Robot, or see the world in 3-D through our one-of-a-kind holography exhibit. Enjoy performances, demonstrations, and lectures throughout our galleries.

Mix and mingle; relax and unwind.

Join us for our newest after-hours program series.

5:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
Second Friday of every month.
Free admission to the galleries, plus additional activities.

Featured Programs for 2012-2013

Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | June | July | Aug

Fri. 9/14	International Design Center Showcase Meet Dan Frey, MIT Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Co-Director of the Singapore-MIT International Design Center, and his team as they demonstrate use of cutting-edge tools (think 3-D printers!) that help engineers experiment with and test their engineering ideas. Get your back-to-school brain tuned up at the MIT Museum!
Fri. 10/12	MIT Takes On Cancer The ingenuity of MIT scientists and engineers has produced inventions from the electronic spreadsheet to PET scans. What happens when they tackle a family of diseases that causes 13% of deaths worldwide? Join researchers from the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT for a series of exciting talks and hands-on demonstrations of ideas with the potential to change the way the world thinks about, diagnoses, and treats cancer.
Fri. 11/9	Gestural Engineering With Arthur Ganson Meet Arthur Ganson and tour the Museum's newly-expanded gestural engineering gallery (tours at 5:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.). Learn about Arthur's kinetic art and his role in the Museum's annual Friday After Thanksgiving Chain Reaction, and then consider whether you'll join the 15th annual event on November 23!
Fri. 12/14	Safe Skies and Little Black Boxes If you have ever flown in an airplane, then you have benefited from more than forty years of work at MIT Lincoln Laboratory to make flying as safe as possible. Explore new technologies and meet the team behind the MIT Museum's newest Sampling MIT exhibit. Program will consist of presentations by Lincoln Laboratory engineers and demonstrations and design challenges from MIT's Aeronautics and Astronautics. Exhibition opening at 5:30 pm; Presentations begin at 6:00 p.m., with activities running 5:30 - 7:30.
Fri. 1/11	Hello Holography Shine a light on art and technology as you visit The Jeweled Net: Views of Contemporary Holography. Exhibit curator Seth Riskin will lead tours of the MIT Museum's popular display holography exhibition, while museum educators present hands-on activities and demonstrations exploring the scientific principles behind these amazing images. Recommended for teens and adults, with special opportunities for middle and high school teachers to learn more about the MIT Museum's new holography workshop. Free admission; tickets required for tours at 5:30 and 6:30 p.m., available on a first-come, first-served basis beginning at 5:00 p.m. Activities occurring throughout the evening, no tickets required.
2/8	Catalyst Collaborative@MIT Presents Sila On remote Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, a climate scientist, an Inuit activist and her daughter, two officers for the Canadian Coast Guard, an Inuit hunter and a polar bear find their values shifting in response to the rapid changes in the world around them. Join the actors, director, and writer at the MIT Museum for a special preview of this dynamic production. Equal parts Inuit myth and contemporary Arctic policy, this new play in development will - in full production - use puppetry, projections, spoken word poetry and three different languages (English, French & Inuktitut) to examine the competing interests shaping the future of the Canadian Arctic and local Inuit population. Free admission
3/8	Nautical Night Set sail for an evening of ocean science, technology and local maritime heritage at MIT. As you journey through our exhibit halls and explore rare artifacts from our collections, enjoy special presentations and interactive show-and-tell by maritime educators, a traditional boatbuilder, ocean engineers, and environmental researchers alike. Bridging the past, present, and future, the MIT Museum's fourth annual Nautical Night celebrates MIT's new Global Environment Initiative through research made accessible through Oceans at MIT . Presenters include award-winning master craftsman Harold Burnham, and Maritime Gloucester, educators from the USS Constitution Museum, the MIT Marine Robotics Team, Joint Program students from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, and the winners of MIT's annual Head of the Zesiger cardboard boat regatta.
4/12	Compass Points: Joël Tettamanti Get an insider's glimpse of our newest photographic exhibition with curator Gary Van Zante and Simmons College senior lecturer and Boston Center for the Arts artist in residence, Edie Bresler. Tours at 6:00 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. Free admission; tour tickets available on a first-come, first-served basis beginning at 5:00 p.m.
5/10	MIT D-Lab Project Showcase Come see how MIT students are developing technologies that make an impact in our world! Join us for the final presentations, projects and prototypes from the growing MIT D-Lab family of classes: Design, Dissemination, Energy, Health, Education, Biodiversity and Supply Chains Free admission. Presentations 5:30 - 6:30 p.m., showcase 6:30 - 7:30 p.m.
6/14	Nautical Night Immerse yourself in a tapestry of glass-blown music. Members of the MIT Glass Band come together with special guest Mark Stewart, MIT Glass Lab Artist-in-Residence, to create a one-of-a-kind symphony of sound and chat with visitors about the art and science behind the creation of the instruments. Performances last approximately 30 minutes each and will be presented at 5:15, 6:15, and 7:15 p.m. Come for one, stay for all—it’s never the same thing twice! Artist residency sponsored by MIT Center for Art, Science, and Technology. Watch a short documentary about the Glass Band here.

MIT Museum Home Programs Soap Box

Hey MIT Community!
If you have ideas for Second Friday talks, performances, or activities, please let us know.