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Rona Wang’s debut story collection sings

Empathizing with the lyrical, moving images of queer and Asian identity in ‘Cranesong’

February 7, 2019

https://artery.wbur.org

Our Guide To This Fall’s Most Innovative Opera

No stranger to blending technology with the opera stage, composer and academic head of MIT’s Media Lab Tod Machover tackles an unlikely history this fall in the world premiere of “Schoenberg in Hollywood.”

September 17, 2018

Spaceus, Roslindale, 2018. Photo: Spaceus.

Spaceus Proposes a New Lease on the Creative Life of the City

“Those things that we do not value, that we do not actively protect, fade away and die,” writes Kevin Baker in “Death of a Once Great City,” an article in Harper’s about New York’s affluence crisis. Baker describes the one-time … Continued

Audra McDonald in conversation with Martin Marks and MIT students. Credit: HErickson/MIT.

“The Show Business I Know”: Audra McDonald in conversation with Martin Marks and MIT students

Audra McDonald, recipient of the 2018 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT, visited MIT campus on several occasions this spring, meeting with students and faculty. In February, she joined Martin Marks’s class, The Musical, for an intimate exchange … Continued

Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, Folke Stone Power Plant 2017, commissioned by the Creative Foundation for Folkestone Triennial 2017. Credit: Thierry Bal.

“Humanities through material engagement”: Gediminas Urbonas on artistic research

“The notion of ‘artistic research’ has really taken hold and captured the imagination of the art world in the past fifteen years,” explains Gediminas Urbonas, associate professor in the Art, Culture & Technology (ACT) program in the MIT School of … Continued

Aerocene. Credit: KHigginsMIT

MIT Arts Events at the 2018 Cambridge Science Festival

Every spring, the Cambridge Science Festival (CSF) makes science accessible, engaging and fun for everyone through multifaceted, multicultural events. In spring 2018, Arts at MIT created a list of of CSF events that taking place on the MIT campus. We … Continued

Bat Out of Hell, Directed by Jay Scheib. Credit: Specular.

Q&A: Director Jay Scheib on award-winning rock musical Bat Out of Hell

Jay Scheib, Professor of Theater at MIT, directs Bat Out of Hell, a rock ’n’ roll musical based on Jim Steinman’s eponymous albums made famous by Meat Loaf. First written over forty years ago, Steinman’s dystopian, futuristic adaptation of the … Continued

Takahiko Iimura, TV for TV, 1983. Two identical TV monitors face to face, dimensions variable. Credit: Courtesy the artist and Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn.

Henriette Huldisch on Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974-1995

“The history of time-based art and technology are entwined,” notes Henriette Huldisch, Director of Exhibitions & Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center, in her catalogue for Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974-1995. Yet, we rarely pause to consider how the physical … Continued

Marcus Thompson. Credit: Donna Coveney.

A Recital By Violist Marcus Thompson Is A Chance To Reflect On Progress, Both Personal and Political

A Momentous Day April 4, 1968 was a momentous day for Marcus Thompson. That was the day that the young violist made his debut in a recital at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It also turned out to … Continued

2017 Hacking Arts. Credit: Blanco Gomez.

Hacking Arts 2017 asks “Why human?”

The 2017 Hacking Arts Festival, which took place at MIT on November 10-12, centered on a timely theme, “Why human?” A surfeit of recent articles report an increasing skepticism about digital technologies among millennials. As retreating into tech-enabled virtual worlds … Continued

Errantry, Werner Pfeiffer. Credit: Courtesy of the artist.

Object Lesson: Werner Pfeiffer’s Errantry

Object Lesson is an ongoing series that highlights some of the art, artifacts, machines, devices, books, instruments and tools that give physical form to ideas that enhance the MIT campus and community.   What is Errantry? Errantry is an artist … Continued

Pedro Reyes, Mexico City–based artist, named the first Dasha Zhukova Distinguished Visiting Artist. Credit: Chris Hind.

In the Making: Pedro Reyes

“My main material is my library. I consider that a very big palette,” says Pedro Reyes, the Mexico City-based artist known for his politically charged participatory and performative installations and multimedia works. “I feed myself materials twice as fast as … Continued

Bryan Czibesz and students observing 3D printer in action. Credit: Jay Pastorello.

Object Lesson: 3D Ceramics Printer

Object Lesson is a new blog series that highlights some of the art, artifacts, machines, devices, books, instruments and tools that give physical form to ideas that enhance the MIT campus and community.   3D CERAMICS PRINTER What is a … Continued

Jake Gunter's lighting design for 'Small Infinities.' Isaac Newton in the foreground, played by Ben Spiro '17, and Hannah Smith, Newton’s mother is in the background, played by Sabrine Iqbal '17. Photo: Jake Gunter.

2017 Recipients of the Wiesner Student Art Awards

There is common misconception that all MIT students prioritize psets over practicing piano, performing Shakespeare, drawing, painting, dancing or designing lighting cues. The 2017 recipients of the Wiesner Student Art Awards—Jacob Gunter, Nathan Gutierrez, Rachel Osmundsen and Hallie Voulgaris—counter this … Continued

Graduate Arts Soirée, 2017. Photo: Joseph Lee.

2017 Graduate Arts Soirée

The MIT Grad Arts Forum, a group that encourages artistic collaboration and intellectual discussions among MIT graduate students from different departments, invited the greater Boston community to the 8th Annual Graduate Arts Soirée on March 25, 2017. This event was … Continued

Being Material Conveners March for Science Statement

A statement from the symposium conveners:   “BEING MATERIAL—and being digital, for that matter—demands that we be with science and engineering, both in the sense of standing with the scientific method and its results as well as in the sense … Continued

Jacob Collier. "Imagination Off the Charts," MIT, 2016. Photo: L. Barry Hetherington.

Out of his room, in his element: Jacob Collier harmonizes with MIT

A productive artist residency generally provides the yin to an artist’s yang. If daily life is distracting, for example, an artist may relish solitude. If, on the other hand, the artist is Jacob Collier, a self-contained singer-songwriter-performer-composer-arranger-producer who mostly works … Continued

Gwenneth Boelens, At Odds, 2015, chromogenic color print (photogram), metal, magnets, chromogenic color print (opaque projection), paper, glass, umbrella frame, tie wrap. Courtesy the artist; Klemm’s, Berlin; Grimm, Amsterdam

Gallery Roundup

  Gwenneth Boelens: At Odds List Visual Arts Center, February 17, 2017 – April 16, 2017 Trained in photography, Gwenneth Boelens (b. 1980 in Soest, NL) is concerned with processes of perception, memory, and time; throughout her work she aims … Continued

Nik Bärtsch's Mobile: Modul 8_11 live at EXIL, 2014. Credit: SRF, Swiss Television.

Minimalism Meets Funk In Nik Bärtsch’s MOBILE Ensemble

When he was young, the Swiss pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch was obsessed with rhythm. Once, when his father brought him along to a party, he spent the whole evening drumming on an ashtray. Nowadays he is apt to reach … Continued

Photograph taken during the creation of Karim Ben Khelifa's The Enemy

Face to Face with The Enemy

Novel Technology When the Lumière brothers screened their 1895 film, The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat—so the famous anecdote goes—audiences frightened by the verisimilitude of the image screamed and got out of the way. As we enter a … Continued

Wiesner Gallery renovation, architect's rendering.

Wiesner Gallery Relaunch

It’s a hard slog in the studio, battling with materials, suppressing self-doubts, cultivating a vision, destroying false starts and ultimately creating something new. To emerging artists, seeing work outside the confines of their studios and in a gallery setting is … Continued

Rehearsal for The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, directed by Jay Scheib, MTA/MIT Dramashop. Photo: Jon Sachs.

Jay Scheib directs The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Brecht’s darkly comic cautionary tale

Election day is finally here. MIT residents can vote at a polling station in the Lobby of Kresge Auditorium, and afterward reflect on political thuggery in a production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, directed by Jay … Continued

Architect David Adjaye discusses the MIT Chapel building

David Adjaye discusses Eero Saarinen’s MIT Chapel

Renowned architect David Adjaye visited the MIT campus on several occasions in 2015-16, as part of his Eugene McDermott Award residency. On one of his visits, Adjaye spoke with CAST about a magnificent small building here on campus, the MIT … Continued

Adam Strandberg, Anna Martel, Anna Kohler. Credit: Caleb Hammond.

Anna Kohler plays with sensations in Mytho? Lure of Wildness

“It’s a tender portrait of a scary thing,” says Anna Kohler, describing her latest theatrical project, Mytho? Lure of Wildness. Kohler’s play explores the fearsome reality of getting old, in particular how aging transforms beauty and affects the senses: “It’s … Continued

Rendering of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington D.C. 2014. Photo: Courtesy of Adjaye and Associates.

The Museum of the Future Needs You… and You

Some mixture of encyclopaedic curiosity, revolutionary zeal and noblesse oblige gave rise to public museums in the 18th century. The first of this kind, the British Museum, opened in 1759 with free entry to “all studious and curious persons.” The … Continued