Engaged: 20 years of the MIT visual arts program

This DVD marks the twentieth anniversary of the Visual Arts Program, founded in 1989 within the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT by Professor Ed Levine. From the outside, the VAP is best known for its Masters of Science in Visual Studies (SMVisS), a two-year graduate program. In 2009, the Visual Arts Program became the program in Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT), merging with the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, which was created in 1967 by Hungarian emigre Gyorgy Kepes. The visual arts at MIT are influenced by a Bauhaus tradition that integrates art into all sectors of life; this lineage is also reflected in the position of the visual arts at MIT within a school of Architecture and Planning. 

Presented on this DVD are works by core faculty, past and present, and a selection of works by alumni. From the wide range of projects developed over the past twenty years, this DVD focuses on one strand of practice--the engagement and reflection of the public sphere, as embodied by the street, the mass media, architecture, institutions, and the performing body. In the work by the faculty there is a predominant focus upon analysis and reflection, whereas in the student work elements of performance and play are foregrounded.