Star Trek’s original USS enterprise will be unveiled at MIT Future Fest this week, writes WBUR’s Nik DeCosta-Klipa for “Boston’s Morning Newsletter.” “The 33-inch model, which was used in the opening of each episode, has never been publicly displayed before on the East Coast. In fact, it was thought to be lost for decades before it popped up on eBay in 2023,” notes DeCosta-Klipa.
The original USS Enterprise from the opening credits of the “Star Trek” series is making its debut at the MIT Museum from Sept. 30 to March 28, reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. In the restoration process, “we were very careful not to erase her [the USS enterprise] age or the signs of wear that are part of her story,” says Roddenberry, son of the show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry. “It was important that we preserve her authenticity, so that she can continue her journey and inspire people once again.”
The 33-inch original model of the ‘Starship Enterprise,’ from the 1960s “Star Trek” series, will be on display at the MIT Museum from Sept. 30 to March 28, writes reporter Mark Feeney for The Boston Globe. “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to show this unique model,” says MIT Museum Director Michael John Gorman. The model “is not merely a prop; it’s a time capsule of human aspiration.”
WBUR’s Maddie Browning highlights exhibits by artists Uri Aran and Hao Jingban set to be displayed at the MIT List Visual Arts Center from Oct. 23 to Feb. 28. Aran’s first major institutional solo exhibition in the U.S “includes new works that feel strange yet recognizable," while Jingban’s “‘I Witness’ (2025) explores the aftermath of the pandemic through four people experiencing different forms of loss,” writes Browning
In a WBUR article, arts writer Maddie Browning names the new MIT List Visual Arts Center exhibit, “DEAD PIXEL,” by artist and comic book illustrator Pap Souleye Fall, as a highlight to check out this summer. The exhibition, inspired by the black spots that materialize on-screen from technological error, is an ongoing story depicted through performance, sculpture and video. Browning notes that “Fall visualizes the empty spaces as ‘portals to hidden realms of autonomy.’”
New York Times reporter Annabel Keenan highlights the “Remembering the Future” exhibit at the MIT Museum, a sculptural installation created by Janet Echelman that uses “climate data from the last ice age to the present, as well as projected future environments, to create a geometric design.” Echelman worked with MIT faculty, including Prof. Raffaele Ferrari and Prof. Caitlin Mueller, to bring the project to life. Mueller explains that she developed a “high-fidelity digital twin of the sculpture generated through our computational simulation that you can orbit and pan through to get perspectives that you can’t see physically in the space.”
Prof. Behnaz Farahi and her team have created “Gaze to the Stars,” an art installation that features video projections of eyes onto the MIT Dome while sharing stories of aspiration, struggle, longing, and hope, reports Emily Maher for WCVB. “Farahi and her team created a space, a pod, where people looked into a screen of stars as their eyes were scanned,” explains Maher. “Next, an AI voice began encouraging them to share their stories.”
Prof. Behnaz Farahi speaks with WBUR reporter Maddie Browning about her “Gaze to the Stars” exhibit, which will bring illuminated projections of eyes to the MIT Dome. “This is an incredible time to really use art and technology, not to just create something which is provocative, but also have a meaningful experience to share stories that matters,” says Farahi.
Boston Globe reporter Mark Feeney spotlights the “Moving Objects” exhibit at the MIT Museum, which features 50 or so items from the museum’s permanent collection. “Over the course of five years, 140 truckloads got moved when the museum transferred its holdings from several sites to a new storage facility, in Medford,” Feeney writes. “The items in the show were chosen because in one way or another the movers found themselves affected by them. They were amusing or beautiful or unexpected or otherwise unusual.”
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.”
Popular Science spotlights a sampling of the winning pictures from this year’s MIT Koch Institute Image Awards, an annual competition showcasing some of the images produced as part of life science and biomedical research at MIT. “Today, high-magnification images can help design new medical tools, enrich our understanding of diseases, and explain how embryos develop. And, as shown by the 2023 winners from the MIT Koch Institute Image Awards, they can be works of art, too.”
Stir World reporter Sunena Maju spotlights “Symbionts: Contemporary Artists and the Biosphere,” an exhibit at the MIT List Visual Arts Center that explores the “collaborative potential of living materials.” Maju writes that the exhibit “brings a new perspective to marrying science and art,” and “invites people to reexamine human relationships to the planet’s biosphere, through the lens of symbiosis.”
Artist Matthew Angelo Harrison’s solo exhibition “Robota” is on display at the MIT List Visual Arts Center through July 24. The exhibition “positions organized labor and workers’ rights as entombed relics, victims of post-industrial economy,” writes Murray Whyte for The Boston Globe.
Sculptor Matthew Angelo Harrison and artist Raymond Boisjoly will both have art installations on display at the MIT List Visual Arts Center this upcoming spring, reports Pamela Reynolds for WBUR. Reynolds notes that Boisjoly’s “latest work continues the artist’s practice of working with text, photography and images in consideration of how language, culture and ideas can be framed and transmitted.” Harrison, “has frozen union organizing artifacts into chunks of resin,” writes Reynolds.
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.