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.
Boston Globe reporter Mark Feeney spotlights“Monsters of the Deep: Between Imagination and Science,” a new exhibit at the MIT Museum that offers “views of whales and related sea creatures, monstrous and otherwise, afforded by more than 40 maps and prints and books, some dating to the 16th century.” Feeney notes that the exhibit dives into the “conceptual and stimulating: a kind of case study in the nature of our knowledge about nature. In this particular case, that natural knowledge concerns whales.”
As part of MIT’s Artfinity festival - a new festival of the arts at MIT featuring 80 free performing and visual arts events, celebrating creativity and community – this month’s After Dark event on Thursday, March 13th at the MIT Museum will be free and open to the public, reports Marianna Orozco for The Boston Globe. Attendees will be able to enjoy “a night of activities, including a ‘Flash Portrait’ drawing and textile design, as well as live DJ sets, open exhibits by faculty, and a talk from Behnaz Farahi, the interdisciplinary designer behind ‘Gaze to the Stars,’ which has brought the MIT dome to life,” explains Orozco.
The MIT Museum is hosting an event with Harvard University Prof. Cass Sunstein about his new book, “Climate Justice: What Rich Nations Owe the World – and the Future,” reports Adelaide Parker for The Boston Globe. The event will explore “our obligations to our fellow humans – and how climate change means our actions have global consequences,” writes Parker.
Boston Globe reporter Mark Feeney spotlights the “Moving Objects” exhibit at the MIT Museum, which features 50 or so items from the museum’s permanent collection. “Over the course of five years, 140 truckloads got moved when the museum transferred its holdings from several sites to a new storage facility, in Medford,” Feeney writes. “The items in the show were chosen because in one way or another the movers found themselves affected by them. They were amusing or beautiful or unexpected or otherwise unusual.”
The MIT Museum is hosting an “After Dark: Made in the ‘90s” event on December 12, reports Claudine Bellanger for The Boston Globe. The event “will feature retro games, a discussion of the decade’s space exploration pursuits with former astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman,” and more, writes Bellanger.
Michael John Gorman, director of the MIT Museum, speaks with Boston Globe reporter Mark Feeney about how science museums can help facilitate the “pleasure of finding things out.” Gorman adds that museums “can give people that spark, that hunger to learn and to dive in deeper. If we are that meeting place for the amazing minds we have around MIT and Cambridge and the Boston area with the broader public, then we can ignite a lot of those sparks. The challenge is not that we have too few ideas. It’s that’s we have too many and how do we shepherd them.”
On October 8, the MIT Museum is hosting a “Techno, Art, and Music Robots talk with artist and engineer Moritz Simon Geist,” reports The Boston Globe. The talk will focus on “the intersection of music and robotics,” writes The Boston Globe.
The MIT Museum is hosting “Game On!” – a free event aimed at providing gamers of all ages an opportunity to “face off against a robot in Connect 4, pick up skills from Doom-playing bacteria, see if a hacked oscilloscope can hit a 30-note streak on Guitar Hero,” and more, reports Emily Wyrwa for The Boston Globe. The event, which is part of the Cambridge Science Festival, will be held on September 26, 2024.
WBUR’s Erin Trahan highlights how the MIT Museum will be presenting selections from the Woods Hole Film Festival with “monthly titles that broadly encompass ‘science on screen.’” Trahan notes that on “Oct. 26, the MIT Glass Lab co-presents a documentary about a master Italian glass blower, ‘Sono Lino.’ Erik Demaine, MIT professor of computer science, and Peter Houk, MIT instructor and artistic director of the Glass Lab, will introduce the film.”
WHDH reporter Polikseni Manxhari spotlights the Kendall Square “Rollerama,” an outdoor roller-skating rink created by MIT. The rink “offers free skate rentals, free lessons, live music, vendors, concessions and more,” explains Manxhari. “It’s not just a roller skating rink,” says Kathryn Brown, director of real estate at MIT’s Investment Management Company. “There’s a lot of people that come into this space and enjoy just the music and being outdoors.”
WBZ NewsRadio’s Emma Friedman visits Rollerama, a free, outdoor pop-up roller skating rink that’s “all about bringing the community together and having fun in the space.” Now open for the summer in Cambridge's Kendall Square, Friedman reports that Rollerama at Kendall Common was put together by MIT's real estate group to bring the community to the newly-acquired space on the corner of Broadway and Third Street. “It’s been such a hit,” exclaims Sarah Gallop, director of government and community relations. "Over the last decade, MIT's been focused on bringing increased vibrancy to Kendall Square."
Boston Globe reporter Mark Feeney spotlights “Drawing After Modernism,” a new exhibit at the MIT Museum that showcases various architectural sketches in different mediums. “There are some 50 items on display, not just artworks but also colored pencils, an airbrush, and exhibition cards for a 1977 exhibition at New York’s Leo Castelli gallery,” explains Feeney. “The MIT show is pretty much an ideal size: small enough for a visitor to comfortably take everything in, big enough to be varied and wide-ranging.”
Boston Globe reporter Malcolm Gay spotlights the “AI: Mind the Gap” exhibition at the MIT Museum, “which explores the social, cultural, and political implications of deepfakes and other forms of generative AI.” The exhibit is “meant to address the idea that technology can manipulate what we perceive as true or false,” said Lindsay Bartholomew, exhibit content and experience developer for the MIT Museum. “But you also need to appreciate what you can do as a human, you have some agency here.”
Boston.com reporters Zipporah Osei, Alex Svenson, Annie Jonas, and Kristina DaPonte spotlight the MIT Press Bookstore in their guide to independent bookstores in the Greater Boston area. “In the heart of Kendall Square, MIT Press Bookstore is ‘one of the only retail bookstores owned and operated by a university press,’” they write. “Part of the MIT Kendall Gateway, you’ll also find the MIT Museum, which ‘seeks to demystify some of the school’s opaque inner workings.’”