A celebration of creativity and community at MITArtfinity is a new festival of the arts at MIT featuring 80 free performing and visual arts events, celebrating creativity and community at the Institute. Artfinity launches with the opening of the new Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building on February 15, 2025, continues with a concentration of events February 28-March 16, and culminates with the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts public lecture by 2025 recipient artist and designer Es Devlin on May 1, 2025, and a concert by Grammy-winning rapper and Visiting Professor Lupe Fiasco on May 2, 2025. Artfinity embodies MIT’s commitment to creativity, community, and the intersection of art, science and technology. We invite you to join us in this celebration, explore the diverse events, and experience the innovative spirit that defines the arts at MIT.About the Artists Artfinity features the innovative work of MIT faculty, students, staff, and alumni, alongside guest artists from the Greater Boston area and beyond.About the Activities & Events All 80 events are open to the public, including dozens of concerts and performances plus an array of visual arts such as projections, films, installations, exhibitions, and augmented reality experiences, as well as lectures and workshops for attendees to participate in. With a wide range of visual and performing arts events open to all, Artfinity embodies MIT’s commitment to the arts and the intersection of art, science, and technology.About the Presenters Artfinity is an institute-sponsored event organized by the Office of the Arts at MIT with faculty leads Institute Professor of Music Marcus Thompson and Professor of Art, Culture and Technology Azra Akšamija. Departments, labs, centers, and student groups across MIT are presenting partners.Visit arts.mit.edu for more information about the arts at MIT.

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