MIT Arts

A big round of applause for MIT graduate students Coco Allred SMACT ‘26 (@coco_allred ), C Jacob Payne MArch ‘27 (@cjacobpayne ), Jessica Stringham SM ‘26 (@_thisxorthat ), and Harrison White MArch ‘27, who are the 2026 recipients of the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Prize in the Visual Arts! 🥳 Allred designs interactive environments that turn solitary acts like drawing and weaving into collaborative ones, with work featured at the Kaunas Biennale. Payne builds architectural models and culinary devices that draw on overlooked histories, including a model evoking the vanished world of Southern juke joints. Stringham creates real-time visuals through live coding, performing in venues around the world using Murrelet, an open-source framework they built. And White fabricates objects that subvert material expectations, like baseball bats finished in industrial lacquer and chairs made from steel strips destined for kitchen sinks. The winners’ work will be featured in an upcoming Wiesner Student Art Gallery exhibition. 📸 Images courtesy of the artists 🔗 Read more about the winners at the link in bio #artsatmit #thisismit #schnitzer #visualarts #studentart

Bravo to Xinyu Xu ‘26 (@xinyuxu_ ) for taking home the 2026 Louis Sudler Prize! 🎆 A lighting designer, technical director, carpenter, pianist, and director, Xu came to MIT planning to study computation and cognition until a production of Tick, Tick… Boom changed everything. She switched her major to Theater Arts and never looked back, going on to co-design lighting for the multimedia dance Volta and to light and associate-direct Jay Scheib’s (@jayscheib ) six-and-a-half-hour epic A Dream Like a Dream as her senior thesis. “No one goes to theater to see the lights,” she says. “But you can’t see the show without lights. For me, the stage feels like a canvas.” The Sudler Prize is presented annually to a graduating senior who has demonstrated excellence and the highest standards of proficiency in music, theater, painting, sculpture, design, architecture, or film. 📸 Images courtesy of the artist 🔗 Read more about Xu at the link in bio #artsatmit #thisismit #sudlerprize #lightingdesign #theaterarts

Congratulations to Bench Space (Yuki Gray MArch ‘27 and Sam Grunebaum) on winning the 2026 MIT Arts Startup Incubator! The platform connects makers and artists to short-term studio and workshop rentals, and took home the $15,000 first prize. Five finalist teams each had five minutes to pitch their creative ventures to a panel of expert judges at the MIT Welcome Center on April 30. Alongside Bench Space, the finalists included an AI-powered interior design procurement tool, an interactive jazz practice platform, a virtual user-testing system for app designers, and a trust infrastructure for the contemporary art market. The four other semifinalist teams received $2,500 each. Launched in 2013, the Arts Startup Incubator is a yearlong program that gives students the structure, mentorship, and peer feedback to turn arts-based business ideas into viable ventures. 🔗 Read more about all five teams at the link in bio
📸 Credit HErickson/MIT

Friday I defended my @mitdusp thesis titled Mountain Blues & Water Gospel: How Affrilachian Women Cultivate Worlds in the Afterlives of Coal Extraction. I can’t fully express how much this project means to me, and how grateful I am to have women in my family guiding me through this process. Through my own family lineage tracing, oral histories, and archival research I came to know more of the lives of Black women who created an overworld in 20th century southern West Virginia coalfields. The load balancing capacity Black women built through community care networks, community serving institutions, and good ol Affrilachian creative ingenuity gives us a historical reference in casting a vision for post-capitalist repair & production in these times of collapse. My thesis exhibition is on view on the third floor of @mitmuseum until today at 5pm! So go check it out if you’re local to Boston. During my month-long residency in WV, I found an LP of Rev. F.C. Barnes & Rev. Janice Brown’s Rough Side of the Mountain at an antique shop. That song was the land gospel that carried me through project but also a song that connected me with the stories of so many others. Thank you to the team who helped me reimagine and re-record this iconic gospel classic (to be released soon🤍) Vocalist: @carlyharveymusic Lead Producer: @austnf1 Bass/Piano/Organ/Drums: @thatguycsquared Studio: @astro.studios This whole process was a practice in using my free will: rejecting objectivity, following my intuition, seeking wholeness, and fully immersing myself in the counter archives of this place I inherited from my mother’s memory. I dedicate it to her Kim Caine, my Nana Ophelia, Great Grandmother Mary, Great Great Grandmother Gertrude🤍 Thank you to my collaborators & village: Council of Southern Mountains, Bluefield State Alumni Association, Poet & Historian L. Renee, and Judge Terri Jamison, my thesis advisor @karilyncrockett , my partner Andre Oshea💗 @artsatmit @intothemayaverse @kimcaine.realestate @torimackenziiie @fontessawoods @dr_tonya_speaks @_ecotonal @euphoriccdreams @kiki_leray @dylanrollo_roth @drecatur @niii.shy @l_merchie @bethanysmith4

Congratulations to the four recipients of the 2026 Laya and Jerome B. Wiesner Student Art Awards: Clay Lewis ‘26 (@_claylewis_ ), Andrea Marcano-Delgado PhD ‘26 (@andreanmarcano ), Perry Naseck SM ‘25 (@perrynaseck ), and Gloria Zhu ‘26 (@riazh_ )! 🎉 Lewis, a music major with a minor in computer science, composed scores for the Logarhythms’ (@mitlogs ) films and is headed to USC’s screen scoring program. Marcano-Delgado balanced a PhD in chemical biology with a deepening vocal jazz practice, co-founding the MIT Afro Latin Ensemble along the way. Naseck, a Media Lab PhD student, has become the de facto lighting designer for the Thomas Tull Concert Hall while researching live concert visuals for improvised and AI-generated music. And Zhu, a double major in computer science and art and design, created metal wearables featured at the MIT Gala (@mitgala ) and has mentored fellow students in MIT’s makerspaces for three years. Named for past MIT President Jerome B. Wiesner and Laya Wiesner, these awards have honored students whose artistic contributions enrich campus life since 1979. 📸 Images courtesy of the artists 🔗 Learn more about the student artists at the link in bio #artsatmit #thisismit #wiesnerawards #studentartists #mitarts filmscoring vocaljazz medialab

The 2026 Student Art Awards celebrate nine artists whose work spans lighting design, live coding, fabrication, film scoring, vocal jazz, and more. ✨ Xinyu Xu ‘26 (@xinyuxu_ ) takes home the Louis Sudler Prize for her transformative lighting design in MIT Theater Arts productions. The Laya and Jerome B. Wiesner Student Art Awards go to Clay Lewis ‘26 (@_claylewis_ ), Andrea Marcano-Delgado PhD ‘26 (@andreanmarcano ), Perry Naseck SM ‘25 (@perrynaseck ), and Gloria Zhu ‘26 (@riazh_ ) for their wide-ranging contributions to MIT’s creative life. And the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Prize in the Visual Arts honors Coco Allred SMACT ‘26 (@coco_allred ), C Jacob Payne MArch ‘27 (@cjacobpayne ), Jessica Stringham SM ‘26 (@_thisxorthat ), and Harrison White MArch ‘27 for distinguished bodies of work in visual art, design, and interactive media. 🔗 Read more about all the winners at the link in bio #artsatmit #thisismit #studentart #mitarts #studentartawards

Did your invite to the MET Gala get lost in the mail? Don’t worry! Sunday, May 10, is your chance to join us for the MIT Gala—a fashion show of student-created looks! Where fashion meets fabrication, the MIT Gala (@the_mitgala ) returns as a one-of-a-kind celebration of creativity at the intersection of art, science, and design. This event is open to the MIT community, and is sponsored by the Council for the Arts at MIT, the Department of Architecture, and the MIT Morningside Academy for Design (MAD). 🗓️ Sunday, May 10 | Runway 8–10pm 📍MIT Media Lab, 6th Floor 🎟️ Tickets $8 🔗 Learn more & Register: link in bio (registration requires MIT login) slide 1: The battery-operated Blade Bird designed by Robin Liu and modeled by Miho Koda. 2024 MIT Gala. Image: Daka slide 2: Emily Pan’s rib skirt, modeled by Anna Chan, closely resembles human ribs, with a sternum and spine. 2024 MIT Gala. Image: Michelle Xiang slide 3: Ball gown, modeled by Yihong Amy Chen, presented by Chris Schmidt-Hong on the runway at the 2024 MIT Gala. Image: Michelle Xiang slide 4: Corset designed by Layla Stanton and sleeveless black dress by Aarushi Mehrotra at the 2024 MIT Gala. Image: Michelle Xiang @the_mitgala | @mitsap | @artsatmit

Wonderful visit from @lcdsoundsystem to MIT this weekend! Thanks to everyone for sharing their incredible work on new materials, fabrication, and physical AI. @cjacobpayne @berfinataman @mateoferfer @cyrusclarke @ethanchang.design @skylartibbits And to @nancywhang and @whitneybedford for making this all happen. 🔥 @mit @mitarchitecture @selfassemblylab @artsatmit

@lupefiasco ’s Core Conceit Diffusion Theory (CCDT) proposes that the central idea of a song or verse does not remain fixed in one place. It spreads, echoes, decays, and gets strengthened by devices like rhyme, repetition, reference, simile and timing etc. Core Conceit Diffusion Model (CCDM) is the formal model that represents that process mathematically. Occurs across multiple coupled domains: Compositional, Source, Twin & Discourse. Each with domain specific inputs • COMPOSITIONAL - The Compositional Domain is the pre-realization semantic field in which possible meanings, structures, and formal choices are generated, evaluated, and organized for expression. • SOURCE - The Source Domain is the realized formal-semantic structure of the work as materially instantiated in language, sound, inscription, or performance. • TWIN - The Twin Domain is the internally reconstructed, memory-bearing semantic field through which a receiver perceives, retains, predicts, and extends the meaning of the source. And where novel meanings not found in the SOURCE are generated. • DISCOURSE - The Discourse Domain is the distributed public-semantic field in which interpretations of the work are socially produced, transmitted, contested, and reinforced. Ngl the pop quiz almost took me out tho💀 #college #mit #hiphop #rap #calculus

Five MIT student teams. One $15,000 grand prize. Meet the founders behind this year’s Arts Startup Incubator pitches, from AI-powered design tools to platforms connecting artists with underused creative spaces. Each team is building something new for the way art gets made, shared, and experienced. See them pitch live this Thursday, Apr 30, at 5pm in the MIT Welcome Center. 🔗 Link in bio to register #artsatmit #thisismit #entrepreneurship #creativestartups #artsstartup

From MIT to Mexico City, work by Art, Culture, and Technology (@actmit ) lecturer Laura Anderson Barbata (@mx_lab ) is now on view at Museo Tamayo (@educacionmuseotamayo ). Wayamou: Common Tongues brings together Barbata and Yanomami artist Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe for the first time, presenting more than one hundred works spanning prints, drawings, paintings, sculpture, and documentary materials. The exhibition traces a collaboration rooted in a single formative encounter: a 1992 visit to the Venezuelan Amazon, where Barbata learned canoe making from the Ye'kuana community and led a papermaking workshop for neighboring communities. Among the young participants was Hakihiiwe, who would go on to become an artist following that experience. Over three decades, their shared practice has deepened into a sustained dialogue around reciprocity, intercultural exchange, ecology, and ancestral knowledge. Hakihiiwe's drawings and prints, inspired by Yanomami basketry and body painting, record the marks and traces of the forest's microscopic world. Together, the works confront the territorial and colonial crises threatening ecosystems and vernacular cultures. As co-curator Andrea Torreblanca writes, "reciprocity finds itself at a fragile and vulnerable moment; for this reason, telling the shared history of these two artists is more urgent than ever." 📍 On view through May 10, 2026 at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City. 🔗 More at the link in bio. 📷 Photographs by Gerardo Landa and Eduardo López (GLR Studio). Courtesy of Museo Tamayo. @mit @mitsap @artsatmit @actmit

Flying Fingers traces the journey of a textile—from sketchbook to loom to finished garment. On April 24, this workshop and exhibition brings into public view work developed in MIT’s Future Heritage Workshop (4.378U / 4.379G), led by Azra Akšamija (@azraaksamija ) in the Art, Culture and Technology program (@actmit ) within the School of Architecture and Planning (@mitsap ). Drawing on Bengali jamdani weaving traditions and research by Abhijit Banerjee (@abhijit_banerjee._ ), students created original motif designs through hand drawing, pattern exploration, and iterative prototyping. Selected works were woven by master weavers Habibul Mallick and Selina Mallick in West Bengal, extending the work beyond the MIT studio into a living craft community. The exhibition also features new garments by Suket Dhir (@suketdhir ) and illustrations by Cheyenne Olivier (@chey.olivier ). It is part of the MITHIC-funded project Performative Preservations and the Economics of Cool (@mitshass ), developed in collaboration with the MIT Center for Art, Science and Technology (CAST, @artsatmit ). 📍 ACT Wiesner Room (E15-207) 🗓 April 24 | 12:15 pm and 1:30 pm 🔗 Info at the link in bio @mit