Welcome to the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST)

 

MIT has long been a place where a productive interplay of art, science, and technology drives innovation and creativity. The word “arts” was etched in stone more than 100 years ago inside the dome in the Lobby 7 entrance. Visiting artists have been welcomed since the 1970s. The “Infinite Corridor” in the center of campus joins together engineering labs, architectural studios, and music practice rooms.

The MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (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. The projects it supports and presents take many forms, including boundary-crossing research by faculty, collaborative work with visiting artists, cross-disciplinary classes, performances, installations, symposia, and publications.   A joint initiative of the Office of the Provost, the School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) and the School of the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (SHASS), the Center is funded in part by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

MIT sees making as an essential form of thinking. The arts introduce new ideas and material things into this vision—in provocative, illuminating, and beautiful ways. CAST’s mission adds an essential dimension to MIT’s motto—Mens et Manus—mind and hand, or learning by doing.

Whether you’re an artist, engineer, scientist, humanities scholar, prospective student, or art lover, CAST invites you to explore MIT’s creative culture of experimentation, risk-taking, and imaginative problem solving.

Leila W. Kinney
Executive Director of Arts Initiatives and MIT CAST