Visual arts

New York Times Style Magazine reporter Susan Dominus spotlights the “maximalist, category-defying work” of MIT Prof. Emerita Joan Jonas, who is being honored with a retrospective at the MoMA. “Perception is something that really is an important part of my thinking,” Jonas explains. “How does the audience perceive my work? How does my work change their perception?” Michael Rakowitz SMVisS ’98 notes that Jonas, “is a foundational and transformative figure not just in the realm of video and performance and feminist art but in art that moves away from anthropocentrism.”

Herbert Kalmus ‘03 and former MIT Prof. Daniel Frost Comstock ‘04 co-founded Technicolor, the company that helped bring color to the movies. Boston Globe correspondent Scott Kirsner notes that the company’s name was “an homage to MIT, which publishes a yearbook called Technique.” Kirsner adds that Technicolor engineers “had to develop their own cameras, shooting and lighting techniques on set, film processing, and add-ons to the movie projector... Technicolor became one of the giants of 20th-century Hollywood.”

Writing for The Conversation, postdoc Ziv Epstein SM ’19, PhD ’23, graduate student Robert Mahari and Jessica Fjeld of Harvard Law School explore how the use of generative AI will impact creative work. “The ways in which existing laws are interpreted or reformed – and whether generative AI is appropriately treated as the tool it is – will have real consequences for the future of creative expression,” the authors note.  

A new exhibit by Azza El Siddique, a sculptor and mixed media artist, will be on display at the MIT List Visual Arts Center this summer, reports Pamela Reynolds for WBUR. Reynolds notes that in this show, “viewers are invited to contemplate the transitory nature of everything.”

WBUR reporter Pamela Reynolds spotlights a new exhibit of Sharona Franklin’s work, which will be on display at the MIT List Visual Arts Center this coming February. “Franklin presents a new installation combining the themes of chronic illness with bioethics, environmental harm and holistic approaches to healthcare,” writes Reynolds.

Graduate student Olumakinde “Makinde” Ogunnaike and Josh Sariñana PhD ’11 join Boston Public Radio to discuss The Poetry of Science, an initiative that brought together artists and scientists of color to help translate complex scientific research through art and poetry. “Science is often a very difficult thing to penetrate,” says Sariñana. “I thought poetry would be a great way to translate the really abstract concepts into more of an emotional complexity of who the scientists actually are.”

Guardian reporter Oliver Basciano explores the work of the late artist Aldo Tambellini, who was a fellow at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies in the 1970s. “With his students he experimented with alternative documentary, collaborative film-making and live broadcast,” writes Basciano.

Paul Ha, director of the MIT List Visual Arts Center, is serving as one of the advisors to Simone Leigh, the first Black artist selected to represent the U.S. at the Venice Biennale, reports Andrea Shea for WBUR.

Boston Globe reporters Patricia Harris and David Lyon spotlight MIT’s public art collection. “A striking collection of modern sculpture, much of it tucked away in secluded courtyards and grassy quads,” they write. “Large-scale sculpture lives at the nexus of art and architecture,” adding that MIT, “has always been a school of imaginative can-do.”

Writing for The Boston Globe, Cate McQuaid highlights Delia Gonzalez’s new exhibit at the MIT List Visual Arts Center. McQuaid notes that Gonzalez turns to “ancient civilization in search of meaning — specifically the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii, in the year 79.”

The Boston Globe reports that Prof. Emerita Joan Jonas has been awarded the 2018 Kyoto Prize. The prize honors “important figures in the fields of advanced technology, basic sciences, and arts and philosophy.”

Writing for The Boston Globe, Cate McQuaid spotlights “Gwenneth Boelens: At Odds” and “Charlotte Moth: Seeing While Moving,” two exhibits on display at the MIT List Visual Arts Center. McQuaid writes that “individual works in the exhibitions prompt bittersweet responses to lost utopias, uncanny associations of place and time, and heightened attunement to the senses.”

“MIT professor emerita Joan Jonas, who represented the United States at the Venice Biennale, has been named the next visual arts mentor for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative,” writes Meredith Goldstein for The Boston Globe. Jonas was named to the initiative along with five other artists.

Boston Globe reporter Mark Feeney writes about photographer Ulrich Wüst’s show at the MIT Museum, his first exhibit in the U.S. Feeney writes that the wonder of Wüst’s show is “how diverse it is in subject matter…yet how consistent in spirit.”

The Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, in partnership with MIT List Visual Arts Center, announced that conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner has been commissioned to paint the Greenway’s fourth temporary mural, reports Olga Khvan for Boston Magazine. “[Weiner] is known for his typographic works, such as his 2008 ‘Dead Center’ installation at MIT,” Khvan explains.