Arts

“SPACE,” a theater production from The Catalyst Collaborative at MIT and Brit d’Arbeloff Women in Science, will premiere at the Central Square Theater and run through February 23, reports Jacquinn Sinclair for The Boston Globe. The production “centers on the Mercury 13, a group of women who passed the same tests as men to be eligible to join the astronaut program in the 1960s, but ultimately were not granted access to the NASA space program in 1962,” explains Sinclair. “The story meshes fiction with historical records to amplify the work of trailblazing pilots, engineers, and activists who fought to ascend past the glass ceiling of gender discrimination in aviation.” 

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.”

Alex Oliva '16, MEng '18 will be touring the country with “Nutcracker! Magical Christmas Ballet” as an acrobat/aerialist, “spinning across the stage inside a 73-inch Cyr wheel,” reports Cate McQuaid for The Boston Globe. “It’s a very simple device, just a circle,” says Oliva. “The laws of physics govern the movement of it the same way that you can spin a coin.”

Boston Globe reporter Malcom Gay spotlights the new Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building, a “new hub for music instruction and performance” for MIT’s 30 on-campus ensembles and more than 1,500 students enrolled in music classes each academic year. Gay notes that: “The more than 35,000-square-foot structure offers a variety of classroom, performance, rehearsal, and studio spaces.” He adds that there will be “more than 25 concerts at Tull Concert Hall that are open to the public this spring.”

Forbes reporter Tom Teicholz spotlights the artistic work of alumna Lauren Bon. “Over the last two decades, as part of her art practice, Bon has undertaken projects that involve an exploration of urban natural resources in ways that have a positive environmental and societal impact,” writes Teicholz. 

Craft in America visits Prof. Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine of CSAIL to learn more about their work with computational origami. “Computational origami is quite useful for the mathematical problems we are trying to solve,” Prof. Erik Demaine explains. “We try to integrate the math and the art together.”

Designer and artist Es Devlin has been named the recipient of the 2025 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT, reports Arushi Jacob for The Boston Globe. The award recognizes and honors “individuals in the arts, spanning a variety of mediums,” explains Jacobs. “The award aims to invest in the careers of cross-disciplinary artists, like Devlin.” 

Prof. David Kaiser and San Francisco Ballet principal dancer Sasha De Sola participate in a dialogue hosted by the Scientific Inquirer that bridges the “boundaries between movement, spacetime, and human expression.” In a wide-ranging discussion, Kaiser and De Sola explore "the intersection of ballet, physics, and human creativity, exploring time’s influence on innovation."

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. 

WBUR’s Maddie Browning spotlights the MIT Student Lending Art Program, which allows undergraduate and graduate students to bring home original works of art from the List Visual Arts Center for the academic year. “I really felt like every student had a deeper relationship with the work after having lived with it for a period of time,” says Gwyneth Jackman, marketing coordinator for the List. “I think that they really care for these pieces. And I think that they know how wonderful of an experience and opportunity this is.”

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.” 

Graduate student Krista Mileva-Frank is curating “Objects for a Heavenly Cave,” an art exhibition at the Marta gallery in Los Angeles, highlighting the work of 13 artists and collectives considering “how the legacy of the Renaissance grotto might extend to their own work,” reports Laura Bannister for The New York Times. “Mileva-Frank hopes the show will encourage audiences to consider the relationship between art and nature and to contend with their own limited agency in an era of climate disaster,” writes Bannister. 

Rollerama, a pop-up roller skating rink at Kendall Common, has become a “corner of liveliness” this summer, providing the public with free fun and art in the form of a new mural by Massiel Grullon, reports Izzy Bryars for The Boston Globe. “We thought it could help people do something fun together, and start to give people a sense of what the Kendall Common build out will be like,” says Sarah Gallop, director of MIT’s Office of Government and Community Relations. 

The Logarhythms, a student a capella group at MIT, have debuted “Log Log Land,” a movie that takes a musical journey through the experiences of students grappling with their interest in pursuing the arts, reports Emily Wyrwa for The Boston Globe. Undergraduate student Reuben Fuchs - who wrote, directed and edited the film - hopes “Log Log Land” serves as "a reminder to people that putting time toward their passions is always important, regardless of their careers,” writes Wyrwa. “I hope people see bits of themselves in the movie,” explains Fuchs.