Join the Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT) program, Infinite Magazine, List Visual Arts Center, MIT Museum, Music and Theater Arts, MIT Office of the Arts, and MIT Open Space Programming for an evening of art, food, and fun.
Check out the List Center galleries and enter the lottery to borrow a work of art, meet student artists, and learn more about MIT’s robust arts community.
Register in advance or on site at the List Visual Arts Center on the atrium level of the Wiesner Building E15.
Registered Arts on the Radar attendees receive free entry and complimentary pizza at the MIT Museum’s After Dark event on a first-come, first-served basis.
This event is open to the MIT community. Capacity is limited; re-entry will be permitted as space allows.
Arts on the Radar Schedule: Thursday, September 10, 2026
4:30–6:30pm
Food + Registration + Info Fair
Building E15, Atrium Level Lobby
Stop by info tables to learn more about arts opportunities at MIT and pick up swag!
Student Lending Art Program Exhibition
Building E15, Atrium Level
Since 1977, the SLAP Exhibition and Lottery has provided MIT students the enviable opportunity to borrow, appreciate, and live with a museum quality work of original art for the academic year.
This program is free for all current MIT undergraduate and graduate students.
6:00–9:00pm
After Dark: COLD
MIT Museum, Building E38
Free admission for Arts on the Radar registrants to After Dark, a monthly adults-only, after-hours event at the museum. Full of science and surprises, expect demonstrations, tastings, conversation, and interactive play. Live music and a pop-up cash bar featuring artisan lite-bites by culinary specialists from around the city.
Unravel the science of cold with activities including:
• Dive into the polar vortex with MIT climatologist Judah Cohen as he breaks down what makes Boston winters so harsh.
• Discover how hibernation could unlock life-saving therapies with MIT alum Kat Kajderowicz (spoiler alert: animals are onto something).
• Journey to the Arctic with MIT Lincoln Laboratory researcher David Whelihan to discover how cutting-edge technology survives, and thrives, in Earth’s most extreme environments.
• Interested in Cryogenics? Meet the Cryogenics Collection team at Havard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology and learn about their ice-cold archives.
• Freeze your creativity by arranging ice on light-sensitive paper to make one-of-a-kind cyanotype prints.
Nitrogen ice cream from Sub Zero and chilly beverages from Momma Grocery and Wine will be available for purchase.
Explore More Opportunities in the Arts at MIT
Whether aiming to make, experience, or study art, or simply seeking to connect with others who share a passion for the arts, there are many opportunities to explore the arts for MIT students.
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More about Arts Entities at the Institute
Art, Culture, and Technology program (ACT)
Academic program in the School of Architecture + Planning
Fostering a rigorous, research-based, and transdisciplinary approach to art practice. The program is headed by distinguished artist-professors and supported by a dynamic cast of practitioner graduate students and staff, visiting artist-lecturers, affiliates, and guests.
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Comparative Media Studies/Writing (CMS/W)
Academic program in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Developing thinkers who understand the dynamics of media change and use critical analysis, collaborative research, and design across a variety of media arts, forms, and practices, applying their insights to contemporary problems.
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Department of Architecture
Academic program in the School of Architecture + Planning
Undergraduate and professional degrees connect the arts, design and urbanism, computation, building technology, and history and theory, as faculty work together to model architecture’s unique integration of diverse modes of thinking and making.
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History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art (HTC)
Academic program in the School of Architecture + Planning
Encompassing both art history and architectural history, the faculty produces a collaborative environment for interdisciplinary work in which artistic and architectural forms make sense within social and intellectual
contexts.
Literature
Academic program in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Exploring how expressive forms—novels, poems, plays, films, and visual art—illuminate history, the present, and possible futures across a broad range of time periods, cultures, and languages.
List Visual Arts Center
The contemporary art museum at MIT
A creative laboratory that provides artists with a space to freely experiment and push existing boundaries. The List presents exhibitions, gallery talks, and more, and manages the Student Lending Art Program and the public art spread throughout the MIT campus.
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MIT Glass Lab
Non-curricular glass blowing classes open to the entire MIT community
A hands-on lab where students learn the ancient art of glass blowing through direct manipulation of molten glass, the teaching approach stresses building teamwork and communication, valuable skills that are transferrable to science/engineering settings.
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MIT Human Insight Collaborative (MITHIC)
Strategic Initiative administered by the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Unlocking the power of human insight to expand humanity’s horizons, to educate tomorrow’s leaders, and to unite top scholars in the human-centered disciplines with colleagues across the Institute to address the world’s greatest challenges.
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MIT Libraries
Providing the foundational resources and services that enable artistic inquiry, creative research, and cultural engagement throughout the Institute. Through comprehensive collections, specialized services, innovative programming, and digital scholarship initiatives, the Libraries enable discovery, preservation, dissemination, art-making, and connection to artistic knowledge and cultural heritage.
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MIT Media Lab
Research and academic organization in the School of Architecture + Planning
Unconstrained by traditional disciplines, Media Lab designers, engineers, artists, and scientists strive to create technologies and experiences that enable people to understand and transform their lives, communities, and environments.
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MIT Museum
Welcoming all to participate in MIT’s unique culture of problem solving and playful creativity and to join the conversation around how science, technology, and design will shape our future.
The MIT Museum Studio and Compton Gallery, a program of the Museum located in central campus, fosters collaboration between experimental museum practice and MIT research and education.
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MIT Music
Academic program in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Music at MIT develops students’ creativity, talent, research skills, and aesthetic sensibility through performance, composition, analysis, and the study of music in its historical and cultural contexts. Students engage with the many facets of music through both its creation and study while working closely with scholars, composers, theorists, performers, and music directors. The program encompasses a broad range of musical traditions spanning diverse eras and cultures, including classical, folk, pop, jazz, and global music.
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MIT Office of the Arts
Student art programs offered by the Provost’s Office, home to the Council for the Arts at MIT and the Center for Art, Science & Technology
Extra-academic opportunities and resources for students, staff, faculty, and the general public. Offers funding, equipment, work space, instruction, connections, discount tickets, awards, workshops, lectures, and more.
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MIT Open Space Programming
Presenting events and activities designed to engage and connect the Cambridge, MIT, and Kendall Square communities. Events take place in the outdoor Kendall/MIT Open Space and at the MIT Welcome Center.
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MIT Theater Arts
Academic program in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Theater at MIT activates performance as a vital lens for questioning, understanding, and responding creatively to the complex forces that shape our world. The program invites students to engage with theater as an inherently interdisciplinary practice through its subjects, collaborations, and production opportunities that bridge artistic, scholarly, and technological inquiry. The faculty’s research and creative work pursue transformative approaches to performance that reach stages and screens across the globe.
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Morningside Academy for Design (MAD)
An interdisciplinary hub for design
Focused on design education, research, and entrepreneurship, MAD weaves in science, engineering, architecture and planning, the humanities, and business, to create an environment where design becomes a catalyst for positive change. While serving the entire Institute, MAD is home to the DesignPlus First Year Learning Community, MITdesignX, MIT D-Lab, and several makerspaces.
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Music Technology
Academic program in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences in partnership with the MIT School of Engineering (SoE)
Music Technology at MIT is a truly multidisciplinary field of study that bridges science, engineering, and the arts, while centering the humanistic and artistic aspects of making music. Faculty—many of whom hold shared appointments in both MIT Music & Theater Arts and Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS)—conduct research and offer classes in audio signal processing, music and AI, musical acoustics and audio effects, interactive music systems, electronic music composition, and digital instrument design. The program offers an undergraduate minor in music technology and a one-year master’s program in music technology and computation.
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Open Documentary Lab
Academic program in the School of Architecture + Planning
An interdisciplinary research hub composed of a world-renowned fellowship program and researchers at the intersection of documentary, technology, co-creation, and civic design. The lab studies, innovates, and critiques
new documentary forms, practices, and ecosystems that use old and new technologies, with a particular focus on interactive, collective, and co-creative methodologies and their impact on place-making, climate change, human rights, and democracy.
Student Life
The Infinite Magazine, a student-run publication that explores art, culture, politics, and aesthetics through the lens of fashion, is one of more than sixty student-led arts and cultural groups at MIT. From a cappella singing to improvisational comedy, origami folding to Bhangra dancing, students can choose from a diverse and lively array of arts activities on campus.
Student Organizations, Leadership, and Engagement (SOLE) provides support, resources, and development opportunities to students involved in organizations, governing or programming boards, and leadership programs at MIT.
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STUDIO.nano
STUDIO.nano is a program at MIT.nano designed to ensure that the individuals inventing the future also reflect, inspire, and imagine through the arts. It creates pathways for artists to collaborate with scientists, access cutting-edge research environments, and explore materials and methods ranging from nanofabrication to XR media.