Join a member of our Visitor Experience Team for this 45-minute introductory tour of the MIT Museum. Learn about the collection, our history, and get your questions answered by our gallery experts.

Every Wednesday at 11am

Experience Stephen Benton's "rainbow" holograms in Optiker, an intimate exhibition that examines the intersection of light and vision. The tour will be led by MIT Museum Senior Curator and Director of Collections, Deborah Douglas.

MIT is not a place so much as it is a unique collection of exceptional people. Its experimental culture and collaborative spirit drive innovations that encompass global issues and improve our daily lives.

Join Exhibit Developer Lindsay Bartholomew for a tour of Essential MIT and learn how the MIT community works. Asking questions others may not ask, and trying the unexpected in pursuit of a greater solution, is essential.

How do you draw a picture of something you’ve heard about but never seen? How do you see it in the first place?

This problem has bedeviled scientists for centuries. Today, we look for things like black holes and gravitational waves. Five hundred years ago, people tried to understand mysterious ocean creatures—like whales.

Join an exhibition curator for a tour of Monsters of the Deep to see how sailors, scholars, and everyday people turned monsters into mammals.

Additional Monsters of the Deep Gallery Talk Dates:
June 6
June 20

The irony of artificial intelligence is that it inspires new perspectives on human intelligence. The more we advance AI technology and consider machine ability versus human ability, the more we need to "mind the gap."

Join Exhibit Developer Lindsay Bartholomew for a tour of AI: Mind the Gap and learn about the tremendous promise, unforeseen impacts, and everyday misconceptions of AI – from robot teammates in the workplace to deepfakes in the media.

The best way to know MIT is through its models. Models (the things) and modeling (the process) have been vital to the work (and play) of MIT from its founding.

Join associate curator of science and technology Florencia Pierri for a tour of Modeling Everything to learn about some of the models on display and see how models reveal inspiration, creativity, and a passion for discovery that are at the heart of MIT.

The gallery talk will be followed by an in-depth look in our Collections Workshop at other models from the Science collection that didn’t make the cut for the exhibition.

Did you know that MIT started in Boston? Join Director of Collections Debbie Douglas in the Allen Collections workshop to explore giant scrapbooks created for the MIT exhibits at the 1893 and 1904 World’s Fairs in Chicago and St. Louis. Take a close look at amazing photos documenting early labs, classrooms, and student life and learn about the beginnings of the modern science and technology education in the United States.

After relocating the MIT Museum's vast collection, the project team has selected memorable and noteworthy items for display from the collection's 1.5 million artifacts. Join Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design Jonathan Duval for a tour of Moving Objects to learn about some of the treasures and oddities of the MIT Museum collection.

Do a deeper dive in MIT Collects and learn more about the museum's collections that reveal the history of MIT's Black students, faculty, staff, and alumni. The tour will be led by Deborah Douglas, Senior Director of Collections and Curator of Science and Technology at the MIT Museum.

Join artists Amanda Ugorji and Sophie Weston Chien for a tour of our newest exhibition, Soft City. Through tactile tapestries, this installation explores the past, present, and future of Black residents in the Boston area, and the neighborhoods they live in.

Our Soft City exhibition is located in the lobby of the Museum, and is free to all.

Then, join us later in the evening for a conversation with the artists: Making Space. They will be in dialogue with Executive Director of the Boston Society of Architecture, Danyson Tavares, Founder of Art in the Antilles and Director of Programs at Design Museum Everywhere, Romy St. Hilaire, and Founder of Public Design Agency, Taylor Holloway.

Having an idea is one thing: capturing it, testing it, and explaining to people far away is something else. For centuries, models have allowed people to think in 3D and share complex ideas across distance. Join Libby Meier, Assistant Curator for the Hart Nautical Collections, to explore how innovation and communication are built into the museum's models.

The MIT Museum has over 1.5 million objects in its collection and each one tells a story (or many stories) that reveal MIT through its material culture. Join Curator of Science and Technology Debbie Douglas and Distinguished Engineer and MIT Museum Volunteer Guy Fedorkow in MIT Collects where they will tell the fascinating story of building an emulator for Whirlwind, MIT's first digital computer. You don't have to be a computer nerd to be fascinated by how a diverse team of women and men (including the first black computer operator) figured out how to get this gigantic machine (2,500 sf!) to solve problems in "real time."

Join Assistant Curator Jonathan Duval for a tour of Drawing After Modernism and learn how the architects in the exhibition played with color, ornament, and history in ways that modernism would never have allowed.

This program is presented as part of Cambridge Science Festival. The MIT Museum is free during the Cambridge Science Festival.