MIT Libraries

Boston’s Little Syria (also known as Syriatown), thrived between the 1880s and 1950s in today’s Chinatown and South End, yet few Bostonians are familiar with it. Drawing from photographs, property maps, and memoirs of Syrian- and Lebanese-Americans, this exhibition narrates the history of a neighborhood which is nearly invisible today.

In our project NeuraFutures we are touching upon implanting memories, reading your dreams while you sleep and communicating a thought between two different people throughout the continents.

A 2022-23 visiting artist at the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST), creative coder Andreas Refsgaard allows people to experiment, interact, and have fun with algorithms and machine learning. Two of his projects will be on view in Lewis Music Library.

Wojnarowicz in Cambridge is a series of photographic portraits composed in response to David Wojnarowicz’s Rimbaud in New York series. It brings queer visibility into the public sphere, inviting viewers to consider identity—as something constructed, as something fluid and changeable—so that the current dialogue (and debate) about identity politics becomes more nuanced, more inclusive, more representative.

Reception: September 14, 2022, 4-6pm in Rotch Library Gallery

This exhibition is of paintings by MIT alumna Susan E. Schur. Her work utilizes various techniques of employing oil paint on paper and board to create works that provide exciting, multi-layer visual experiences, with each viewer becoming an active participant in the realization of the vision presented.

Soft City is a large-scale textile series that maps the urban fabric of Black neighborhoods in the Boston area. The tapestries map historic (redlined) and contemporary Black neighborhoods, including Roxbury, Dorchester, and East Cambridge.

Reception: March 11, 5-6pm

By combining the intensity of poetry with vivid imagery, The Poetry of Science aims to strengthen the voices and experiences of distinct communities of color, synthesizing a striking poetic and visual language.

The Shingles Nest is a small pavilion installation that inhabits the Rotch Library and serves as a reading corner; visitors are invited to sit inside and enjoy the privacy and warmth of the wooden cocoon.

With a renovation of Charles Hayden Memorial Library, the MIT Libraries aim to create physical spaces that reflect the library of the future.

This exhibit brings together items from Hayden’s past — archival materials relating to its planning and dedication — with the vision for its future in a celebration of the library’s enduring role fueling research and learning at MIT.

What does it mean to remember? Sited in four Italian towns that have been indelibly changed by natural disasters, this exhibition explores the notion of architectural memory. Across Pompeii, Catania, Poggioreale, and Gibellina, each town...