The arts at MIT aren’t housed in a single department—they’re a thriving ecosystem of schools, centers, museums, and programs united by the recognition that the arts are both rigorous disciplines in their own right and essential catalysts for discovery, innovation, and MIT’s future leadership across all fields of inquiry.
If you can’t find something on this list that you know exists or you want to submit something new, please contact us at arts@mit.edu.
Office of the Chancellor
Student Organizations, Leadership, and Engagement (SOLE)
Under the Division of Student Life, SOLE is a central resource for MIT’s vibrant student community. SOLE provides support, training, resources, and development opportunities to students involved in organizations, governing boards, programming boards, and leadership programs across MIT.
There are more than 60 student-led arts and cultural groups at MIT, which are advised by SOLE.
Office of the Provost
MIT Libraries
MIT Libraries functions as a vital hub for arts scholarship, providing the foundational resources and services that enable artistic inquiry, creative research, and cultural engagement throughout the Institute. Through comprehensive collections, specialized services, and innovative programming and digital scholarship initiatives, the Libraries enable discovery, preservation, dissemination, art-making, and connection to artistic knowledge and cultural heritage.
School of Architecture + Planning (SA+P)
Department of Architecture
The oldest professional department of architecture in the United States and consistently ranked first globally in contemporary architectural research, the MIT Department of Architecture is home to undergraduate courses in design and architecture, to a highly selective professional MArch program, to research focused master’s degrees in art, architecture, and building technology (SMACT, SMArchS,SMBT), and to a PhD program with separate curricula and concentrations in Design and Computation, the History, Theory and Criticism of Art and Architecture, and Building Technology.
Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT)
ACT is a research-driven academic program for artistic creation and critical inquiry, housed within the School of Architecture + Planning (SA+P) and the Department of Architecture. ACT offers undergraduate and graduate courses that integrate rigorous artistic practice with scholarly research, providing students with hands-on experience to critically engage diverse media and forms of expression and examine the cultural dimensions of technology.
History of Art, Theory, and the Criticism of Art (HTC)
HTC was founded 50 years ago as the first PhD-granting program within a school of architecture. 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.
Media Lab / Program in Media Arts and Sciences (MAS)
Creating transformative technologies, experiences, and systems that enable people to reimagine and redesign their lives toward a more interconnected, responsible, and flourishing future.
Morningside Academy for Design (MIT MAD)
MIT MAD is an interdisciplinary hub that celebrates the transformative power of design at MIT and beyond. MIT MAD exists to foster innovation, empower individuals, and reshape the way we learn.
Open Documentary Lab (ODL)
ODL is an interdisciplinary research hub composed of a world-renowned fellowship program and researchers at the intersection of documentary, technology, co-creation, and civic design.
School of Engineering
MIT Glass Lab
The MIT Glass Lab was started in 1972, initially as a credit-bearing class in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE), and then, in 1986, as an extracurricular activity still sponsored by DMSE and open to all members of the MIT community.
STUDIO.nano
MIT.nano is a global leader in supporting science and technology advancements, built on the understanding that innovation is as much cultural as it is technical. In 2021, MIT.nano launched STUDIO.nano, a program designed to ensure that as MIT invents the future, the community also reflects, inspires, and imagines through the arts.
School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS)
Comparative Media Studies/Writing (CMS/W)
CMS/W’s studio and workshop curriculum combines approaches from the humanities, arts, social sciences, and science communication to teach its graduates how to work and interact with contemporary media. Students learn both theory and practice, and can specialize in areas such as creative writing, game development, and filmmaking.
MIT Human Insight Collaborative (MITHIC)
MITHIC unlocks 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.
Literature (21L)
With a faculty composed of renowned scholars and dedicated teachers, MIT Literature offers a broad spectrum of courses across time periods, international cultures, and languages. Literature courses at MIT examine how multiple expressive forms, such as novels, poems, plays, films, and visual art, not only make imaginative and critical sense of history and the present, but also project us into a range of possible futures.
Music (21M)
The Music program develops students’ creativity, talent, research ability, and aesthetic sensibility through performance, composition, history, culture, technology, and analysis.
Theater Arts (21T)
The program in Theater Arts at MIT invites students to explore theater as a contemporary artistic practice within an intellectually rich continuum of traditions in the performing arts. The program engages the performing arts as a mode of inquiry into self and society with the intention that it can become the vehicle for transformation of one or both. Theater Arts at MIT is process in action, interdisciplinary at its core, and committed to a rigorous and innovative course of study across a diverse spectrum of creative practices—acting, choreography, scenography, lighting, interactive design and real-time effects processing, dramaturgy, playwriting, dance, and directing.
SHASS and SOE
Music Technology and Computation (MTC)
The master’s program in Music Technology and Computation is a joint program of the School of Engineering and the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. The degree bridges music and scientific curiosity to develop musical expertise that guides technical inquiry, and to develop technical excellence that guides musical inquiry.
Vice Provost for the Arts
List Visual Arts Center
The List Visual Arts Center, MIT’s contemporary art museum, champions groundbreaking art and artists to inspire people at MIT and around the world. The List Center presents six to nine contemporary exhibitions annually and maintains MIT’s permanent art collection, which includes the Institute’s Public Art Collection, the Student Lending Collection, and the Campus Lending Collection.
MIT Museum
The MIT Museum is a key piece of the arts and cultural infrastructure at MIT, though its breadth of scope goes far beyond the arts. Embracing all areas touched by MIT in its exhibitions and programming, the museum brings the arts into constant dialogue with science, engineering, technology, design, architecture, and the humanities.
Office of the Arts at MIT
The Office of the Arts connects students, faculty, staff, and alumni across the Institute, facilitating community-wide access to resources for art creation and engagement, on campus and beyond. Programs administered by the Office of the Arts include CAST, CAMIT, Student Art Programs, and W20 Student Art Studios.
Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST)
CAST was established in 2012 to create new opportunities for art, science, and technology to thrive as interrelated, mutually informing modes of exploration, knowledge, and discovery. CAST’s multidisciplinary platform presents performing and visual arts programs, supports research projects for artists working with science and engineering labs, and sponsors symposia, classes, workshops, design studios, lectures, and publications.
Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT)
CAMIT was founded in 1972 by MIT President Jerome B. Wiesner to support the arts at the Institute. With its enthusiastic advocacy for all the arts at MIT, the Council’s mission is to act as a catalyst for the development of a broadly based, highly participatory program in the arts, firmly founded on teaching, practice, and research at the Institute, and to conduct arts-related fundraising activities on behalf of MIT.
W20 Student Art Studios
The W20 Student Art Studios were established in 1968 as the Student Art Association (SAA) to provide extra-academic, hands-on instruction and studio experience in the arts for all levels in a range of media in four terms per year, including Independent Activities Period (IAP) and summer.
If you can’t find something on this list that you know exists or you want to submit something new, please contact arts@mit.edu.