Arts

Boston Globe reporter Mark Feeney spotlights “Made to Measure,” a permanent exhibit at the MIT Museum that showcases a selection of instruments designed to take a variety of measurements and have been central to scientific research and discovery at MIT and beyond. The exhibit’s displays explore strength, temperature, length and more. The How Far?” display “includes a taffrail log (used by sailors to measure distance), pedometers, a surveyor’s tape, a transit theodolite, several rulers, and a Smoot bar,” Feeney explains, “a unit of measurement based on the height of MIT undergraduate Oliver Smoot.” 

New York Times reporter Annabel Keenan highlights the “Remembering the Future” exhibit at the MIT Museum, a sculptural installation created by Janet Echelman that uses “climate data from the last ice age to the present, as well as projected future environments, to create a geometric design.” Echelman worked with MIT faculty, including Prof. Raffaele Ferrari and Prof. Caitlin Mueller, to bring the project to life. Mueller explains that she developed a “high-fidelity digital twin of the sculpture generated through our computational simulation that you can orbit and pan through to get perspectives that you can’t see physically in the space.” 

The MIT Museum presents “Remembering the Future,” a new installation by artist Janet Echelman in collaboration with Prof. Caitlin Mueller, reports Kat Barandy for DesignBoom. The installation suspends above the museum’s grand lobby and will be open to the public through fall 2027. “The work transforms climate data into a three-dimensional form that invites visitors to engage both visually and conceptually,” Barandy explains.

Fast Company reporter Elizabeth Segran spotlights “Remembering the Future,” a sculpture on display at the MIT Museum. The piece was created by artist Janet Echelman and “inspired by climate data guided scientists at MIT,” writes Segran. “The sculpture is “made from thousands of feet of plastic twine falls from the ceiling. Each strand of fiber represents the temperature of the planet over a period of time and the color signifies how hot it is, with blue and greens reflecting cooler climates than the reds and oranges. The sculpture goes all the way back to the ice age, but the most thought provoking part is our current moment, represented by a single yellow piece of twine. It then spreads out into a broad web that represents future centuries: Based on how we act right now, the future could look shockingly red or a calmer blue.” 

Visiting artist Jeanette Andrews will present “‘The Attestation: A Performance of Illusions’ a site-specific show and installation about polarized beliefs” at the Kresge Little Theater on October 3 and 4, reports Cate McQuaid for The Boston Globe.

Boston Globe reporter Jeffrey Kelly spotlights the MIT Student Lending Art Program, which allows MIT students to borrow original works of art from the MIT List Visual Arts Center. “No artist wants their work to be collected by a museum and to sit in storage forever and come out once every 10 years,” says Natalie Bell, MIT List’s chief curator. “That’s not why they’re doing this. So it’s a really unique collection in that way, because the priority is for people to experience the work and to live with it.”

In a video for CNN, graduate student Alex Kachkine explains his work developing a method using AI to create a reversible polymer film that could be used to restore damaged oil paintings, making the process faster than manual restoration. Kachkine explains that he hopes his work helps “get more paintings out of storage and into public view as there are many paintings that are damaged that I would love to see and it’s a real shame that there aren’t the resources necessary to restore them.” 

Graduate student Alex Kachkine speaks with New York Times reporter Ephrat Livni about his work creating a new AI technique for restoring paintings, and how his research on microchips helped inspire the development. Microchips “require very high degrees of precision,” Kachkine explains. “And it turns out a lot of the techniques we use to achieve that level of precision are applicable to art restoration.” Kachkine adds that he hopes conservators will be able to “leverage the benefits” of the techniques he gleaned from engineering to preserve “really valuable cultural heritage.”

Researchers at MIT have developed a new tool, called Meschers, that allows users to create detailed computer representations of mathematically impossible objects, reports Gayoung Lee for Gizmodo. “In addition to creating aesthetically quirky objects,” Lee explains, “Meschers could eventually assist in research across geometry, thermodynamics, and even art and architecture." 

Graduate student Alex Kachkine has developed a new technique that “uses AI-generated polymer films to physically restore damaged paintings in hours,” reports Benj Edwards for Ars Technica. “Kachkine's method works by printing a transparent ‘mask’ containing thousands of precisely color-matched regions that conservators can apply directly to an original artwork,” explains Edwards. “Unlike traditional restoration, which permanently alters the painting, these masks can reportedly be removed whenever needed. So it's a reversible process that does not permanently change a painting.” 

Guardian reporter Ian Sample highlights how graduate student Alex Kachkine has developed a new approach to restoring age-damaged artwork in hours. “The technique draws on artificial intelligence and other computer tools to create a digital reconstruction of the damaged painting,” explains Sample. “This is then printed on to a transparent polymer sheet that is carefully laid over the work.” 

Graduate student Alex Kachkine speaks with Nature reporter Amanda Heidt about his work developing a new restoration method for restoring damaged artwork. The method uses “digital tools to create a ‘mask’ of pigments that can be printed and varnished onto damaged paintings,” explains Heidt. The method “reduces both the cost and time associated with art restoration and could one day give new life to many of the paintings held in institutional collections — perhaps as many as 70% — that remain hidden from public view owing to damage.” 

Nature spotlights graduate student Alex Kachkine – an engineer, art collector and art conservator – on his quest to develop a new AI-powered, art restoration method, reports Geoff Marsh for Nature. “My hope is that conservators around the planet will be able to use these techniques to restore paintings that have never been seen by the general public,” says Kachkine. “Many institutions have paintings that arrived at them a century ago, have never been shown because they are so damaged and there are no resources to restore them. And hopefully this technique means we will be able to see more of those publicly.” 

WBUR reporter Amelia Mason spotlights MIT Visiting Scholar Wasalu Jaco (Lupe Fiasco) and his work exploring “the creative possibilities of site-responsive music.” Jaco “calls the process of making these songs ‘ghotiing,’ which is confusingly pronounced “fishing” – a phonetic joke in which the “f” sound is drawn from the “gh” in ‘rough,’ and so on,” explains Mason. “Fiasco uses ghotiing as a teaching tool, sending his MIT students on outings to various public art pieces across campus to ‘fish’ for musical inspiration. He ultimately hopes to make a song for every piece of art on MIT’s campus.” 

On Tuesday, May 6, the MIT Museum is hosting “Seeing and Understanding the Unknown,” a panel discussion to celebrate the opening of their latest exhibit, “Monsters of the Deep,” reports Adelaide Parker for The Boston Globe. “MIT physicists and curators will guide you through centuries of scientists’ work picturing the unseen — from 16th-century zoologists exploring life underwater to modern physicists modeling black holes,” explains Parker.