This year’s theme, “على خطى الخوارزمي” (“Following in the Footsteps of Al-Khwarizmi”), honors individuals who have shaped science, technology, music, and art, inspiring the next generation of Arab leaders and creators.The conference will bring together leaders, innovators, and experts to discuss the latest advancements and challenges in technology, entrepreneurship, and science in the MENA region.

The 2025 Max Wasserman Forum: Visions of Sustainability brings together artists, scholars, and curators to discuss climate change within the arts and museum institutions.There is an ever-growing sense of urgency from across disciplines to respond to the challenges of climate change and the current state of our environmental degradation. The role art plays in this dialogue is not separate from but, rather, in conversation with sustainable futures and climate justice imperatives. Artists have contributed to the climate change dialogue and responded to ecological challenges while questioning human impacts and looking directly at our precarious present to envision a more stable future.Art not only conceives new ideas but also evokes empathy, provides a space for healing, advocates for community resilience and mobilization, and reframes complex and overwhelming scientific reports. This Forum will focus on rethinking how art and cultural organizations can operate, the disproportionate effects of climate change on those in vulnerable populations, and the transformative role art and artists take. What are the multifaceted impacts of environmental degradation? How can we cope with and understand the precarious present we live in? And how can we creatively reframe and effectively make change in our communities? These overarching drives and questions will be addressed by creative practitioners, expressing their visions of sustainability.Panel 1 Human Traces April 5, 10:30–11:45 AMHow have artists navigated landscapes of extraction and ecologies of displacement? The practices represented on this panel consider environmental change within longer histories of colonialism, capitalism, and human effects on our physical environment. Looking at cultural systems and structures, they map the violence of enclosure and dispossession but also propose a renewal of ethical lifeways—paths to reparation, repatriation, and collective survival.Panelists: Adam Khalil, Nida Sinnokrot, Lan Tuazon Moderator: Mae-ling LokkoLunch Break/Climate Grief Meditation 12:00–1:00 PMPanel 2 Advocacy Work April 5, 1:00–2:15 PMHear from artists utilizing social practice and activism to seek out solutions for our changing landscape. These panelists have created multiple artist-run initiatives as a method to work within their communities. This panel will dive deeper into how participatory collaborations can establish new solutions, and how we might find new pathways through dialogue.Panelists: Lee Pivnik, Jen de los Reyes, Sahar Qawasmi Moderator: Janelle Knox-HayesPanel 3 Rethinking Cultural Systems April 5, 2:45–4:15 PMTaking a closer look into collections, cultural production, and cultural sites, these artistic practitioners ask us to reconsider the possible. Disrupting default operating systems and pulling at the threads of sourcing and resource allocation, they will explore provenance research, conservation methods, and collection policies in this panel, as well as museum and artistic practices and how they impact global industries and our planet’s degradation.Panelists: Amy Balkin, Beatrice Glow, Michael Wang Moderator: Stefanie HesslerKEYNOTE ADDRESS April 5, 4:30–5:30 PM Torkwase DysonTorkwase Dyson (b. 1974, Chicago, Illinois) is a painter working across multiple mediums to explore the continuity between ecology, infrastructure, and architecture. Examining human geography and the history of Black spatial liberation strategies, Dyson’s abstract works grapple with how space is perceived, imagined, and negotiated, particularly by Black and Brown bodies. Dyson has distilled a vocabulary of poetic forms to address the spaciousness of freedom and question what type of climates are born out of world-building.Dyson has had solo exhibitions and installations at Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine; Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago; Hall Art Foundation, Kunstmuseum Schloss Derneburg, Germany; Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, Philadelphia; Suzanne Lemberg Usdan Gallery, Bennington College, Vermont; and the Serpentine Pavilion, Serpentine Galleries, London. She has also participated in group exhibitions at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; California African American Museum, Los Angeles; Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, Columbus; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson; Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; and Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York. Her work was also presented at the 13th Shanghai Biennale.Speakers Amy Balkin, Beatrice Glow, Stefanie Hessler, Adam Khalil, Janelle Knox-Hayes, Mae-ling Lokko, Lee Pivnik, Sahar Qawasmi, Jen de los Reyes, Nida Sinnokrot, Lan Tuazon and Michael Wang.The Max Wasserman ForumThe Max Wasserman Forum on Contemporary Art was established in memory of Max Wasserman (MIT Class of 1935), a founding member of the Council for the Arts at MIT. This public Forum was endowed through the generosity of the late Jeanne Wasserman and addresses critical issues in contemporary art and culture through the participation of renowned scholars, artists, and arts professionals. The Forum is organized and presented by the MIT List Visual Arts Center.The List Visual Arts CenterThe List Visual Arts Center, MIT’s contemporary art museum, collects, commissions, and presents rigorous, provocative, and artist-centric projects that engage MIT and the global art community. The List is a creative laboratory that provides artists with a space to freely experiment and push existing boundaries.

This in-person class covers hands-on care of the newborn and very young infant.We’ll practice feeding, diapering, holding, dressing, and getting our “pretend” model babies to sleep.You’ll learn about normal newborn behavior and discuss different ways to handle crying and sleep.We’ll also talk about going out and finding support and community.You’ll leave with multiple handouts that you can refer to in the future.Cost covers 2 people (mom and support person).Registration is required on our wellness class website. If you do not already have an account on this website, you'll need to create one. This is a fee-based class and open to the entire MIT community.

Join multimedia maker and creative instructor Alex Adamo for an all-ages, intergenerational crafting experience! Make a blue jean banner with fabric and findings that is as unique as you are. Feel free to bring fabric, beads, buttons, or other small items to incorporate.

Film Screening (Kurak Gunler) followed by discussion with Prof. Evren Balta and Dr. Ohannes Kilicdagi

Please join us for an Emerson/Harris Masterclass with trombonist and composer Alan Ferber!April 5, 2025 1:00pm | W18 Thomas Tull Concert HallA baritone with a vibrant 40-year career in both opera and concert, Small has performed over 70 different opera roles in nearly 60 operas, including Rigoletto, Tosca (Scarpia), La traviata (Germont), La bohème (Marcello), and Il barbiere di Siviglia (Figaro), a role he has performed over 100 times. He has appeared with the Cincinnati May Festival, the Austin Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, and Fort Wayne Philharmonic in works such as Elijah, Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem, Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem, Bloch’s Sacred Service, and Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater. He has collaborated with conductors James Conlon, Anton Coppola, Valery Ryvkin, Victor DeRenzi, Robert Larsen, and others. An avid recitalist, he has performed recitals with Anton Nel, Jean Anderson, Joachim Reinhuber, Donna Loewy, Steve Wogaman, and John Novacek, and has performed Schubert’s complete Winterreise cycle 13 times to date.Small retired from the University of Texas at Austin’s Butler School of Music in 2020 after 20 years, during which he was chosen as a NATS Master Teacher (Intern Program, 2011). His students have been finalists in the Metropolitan Opera National Auditions, the International Verdi Baritone Competition, and other awards. He earned a Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance from DePauw University’s School of Music while studying with Thomas Fitzpatrick (protégé of American baritone Mack Harrell) and earned an Artist Diploma in Opera and an M.M. in Voice Performance from the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, under the tutelage of the great Italian basso Italo Tajo.The Emerson/Harris Masterclass Series is supported in part by the Robert L. Malster (1956) Fund. This project is presented as part of Artfinity, an Institute-sponsored event celebrating creativity and community at MIT. Artfinity is organized by the Office of the Arts.