Arts at MIT

A big round of applause for MIT graduate students Coco Allred SMACT ‘26 (), C Jacob Payne MArch ‘27 (), Jessica Stringham SM ‘26 (), and Harrison White MArch ‘27, who are the 2026 recipients of the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Prize in the Visual Arts! 🥳

Allred designs interactive environments that turn solitary acts like drawing and weaving into collaborative ones, with work featured at the Kaunas Biennale. Payne builds architectural models and culinary devices that draw on overlooked histories, including a model evoking the vanished world of Southern juke joints. Stringham creates real-time visuals through live coding, performing in venues around the world using Murrelet, an open-source framework they built. And White fabricates objects that subvert material expectations, like baseball bats finished in industrial lacquer and chairs made from steel strips destined for kitchen sinks.

The winners’ work will be featured in an upcoming Wiesner Student Art Gallery exhibition.

📸 Images courtesy of the artists
🔗 Read more about the winners at the link in bio

Bravo to Xinyu Xu ‘26 () for taking home the 2026 Louis Sudler Prize! 🎆

A lighting designer, technical director, carpenter, pianist, and director, Xu came to MIT planning to study computation and cognition until a production of Tick, Tick… Boom changed everything. She switched her major to Theater Arts and never looked back, going on to co-design lighting for the multimedia dance Volta and to light and associate-direct Jay Scheib’s () six-and-a-half-hour epic A Dream Like a Dream as her senior thesis. “No one goes to theater to see the lights,” she says. “But you can’t see the show without lights. For me, the stage feels like a canvas.”

The Sudler Prize is presented annually to a graduating senior who has demonstrated excellence and the highest standards of proficiency in music, theater, painting, sculpture, design, architecture, or film.

📸 Images courtesy of the artist
🔗 Read more about Xu at the link in bio

studentart mitarts

Meet the five finalist teams competing for $15,000 in MIT’s Arts Startup Incubator pitch event!

Bench Space (Samuel Grunebaum, Yuki Gray) connects makers and artists to short-term studio and workshop rentals, unlocking idle creative spaces and making them more affordable and accessible to all.

Cognify (Muhammad Hamza Mubashir) is a design intelligence tool that simulates interactions so design teams make faster, data-driven design choices.

Neural Notes (Mike Jiang) is an AI-powered music platform that transforms isolated practice time into interactive music-making, making it more engaging for musicians to improve and keep playing.

Rinovo (Zoe De Simone) is an AI-powered interior design platform that automates the procurement process, reducing project costs and timelines to expand creative output.

Sóter (Alvaro and Jorge Jimenez de Andrade) solves art market opacity with digital passports, giving artwork a digital identity, ensuring traceability and security in every transaction.

Come cheer them on Thursday, Apr 30, at 5pm in the MIT Welcome Center!

📸 Photo credit HErickson/MIT

“Hiii-iii! I’m Spider Rabbit,” beams the man in white coveralls, floppy paper ears, and chalky face paint. Played in March to a packed house at MIT and currently at La MaMa in New York, Spider Rabbit is a surreal solo one-act by poet Michael McClure, brought to life by MIT senior lecturer Dan Safer and actor Tony Torn.

The pair spent an intensive week on campus working with creative collaborators and MIT students to develop a production they’d begun building together a few years ago. For Torn, who taught acting at the Institute a few years ago, the chance to work with students again was a perk of rehearsing on campus. Students like Joy Ma ‘25, completing an MEng after earning her bachelor’s in physics and computer science, joined the production team during rehearsals—one of over 10 theater classes she’s taken at MIT. As Torn puts it, “once [MIT students] see theater as a different kind of creative problem to be solved, they immediately lock in.”

Spider Rabbit is now playing at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York through April 12.

🔗 Read the full story at the link in our bio
📸 Photos by Ben Rose/MIT and HErickson/MIT