MIT's Public Art Collection

Your Guide
Laura Tenny, ASLA
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MIT’s public art program has been active for more than forty years, since the 1961 commission of Dimitri Hadzi’s sculpture Elmo-MIT. It includes many important twentieth-century works of art by Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Mark di Suvero, Jacque Lipshitz, and others.  

Many of the works, especially large-scale sculptures, are placed outside as the focal points of campus courtyards and lawns. The program was broadened in 1968 with the “Percent-For-Art-Program” that stipulates that a portion of capital project budgets be set aside for the purchase and installation of public art. The collection is curated by MIT’s LIST Visual Art Center, and there are currently 91 points of interest along the tour. You can learn more about the collection, see a map, and find audio podcasts at http://listart.mit.edu/public_art.

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