MIT Libraries

This exhibit celebrates the first-known all-women architecture firm in Boston, founded in 1900 by Lois Lilley Howe, one of the first woman to study architecture at MIT, completing the two-year Partial Course in Architecture in 1890. Howe, along with architects Eleanor Manning and Mary Almy, completed more than 900 commissions throughout the course of their company’s history.

Ink, Stone, and Silver Light: A Century of Cultural Heritage Preservation in Aleppo draws on archival materials from the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT (AKDC) to explore a century of cultural heritage preservation in Aleppo, Syria. The exhibit presents three modes of documentation—manuscript, built form, and photography—through which Aleppo’s urban memory has been recorded and preserved.

MIT Distinctive Collections saved a set of striking windows of gypsum and stained-glass, dating to the late 18th- to 19th c. Ottoman Empire. This exhibition illuminates the life of these historic windows, tracing their refracted histories from Egypt to MIT.

The “Dead Cities” are a group of over 820 settlements in northwestern Syria. Masterfully carved out of gray limestone and built without cement, many stood in pristine condition until the early 20th century. This exhibit features detailed drawings, as well as maps, models, academic books, and photographs.

Under the Lens examines the work of women scientists in biology and chemistry at MIT beginning with Ellen Swallow Richards, MIT’s first woman student, through the present day, when many women scientists hold leadership positions at the Institute.

Researched by current MIT faculty, students, alumni, and staff, this historical exhibit tells the remarkable story of South Asia at MIT and MIT in South Asia to honor the determination and grit of multiple generations of South Asians at the Institute.