Dear Friends,
As we conclude another year at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, I am pleased to share this report on a truly historic period for the museum.
At the List Center, our mission is to champion groundbreaking art and artists while fostering critical dialogue and meaningful engagement across disciplines and communities. Reflecting on the period from July 1, 2024–June 30, 2025, I am proud to highlight a year marked by extraordinary growth, renewed visibility, and deepened public impact as we approach the List Center’s fortieth anniversary.
This past year, the List Center welcomed over 32,500 visitors to our galleries—the highest attendance in our history and a 94 percent increase over the previous fiscal year. This milestone speaks to the strength of our artistic program and to the expanded reach of our communications, digital initiatives, and national and international press coverage.
Among the year’s highlights was Steina: Playback, the first solo exhibition in more than a decade devoted to the pioneering media artist Steina. Organized with the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the exhibition drew record attendance and critical acclaim, then traveled to Buffalo in March and to a co-presentation at the National Gallery of Iceland and the Reykjavik Art Museum in October. Our signature List Projects series continued to support emerging and under-recognized artists through exhibitions by Jeremy Couillard, Kite, and Elif Saydam, offering artists the space to experiment, collaborate, and engage new audiences.
The List Center further strengthened its role as steward of MIT’s Public Art Collection through ambitious collaborations, including a multimedia performance commemorating Sanford Biggers’s Madrigal during MIT’s Artfinity festival and GHOTIING MIT: Public Art, a site-specific sound project created with MIT MLK Visiting Scholar Lupe Fiasco and shared through the Bloomberg Connects platform.
Within this report, I’m proud to share more about how our team is expanding the reach of contemporary art, engaging audiences on campus and across the globe, and building on the momentum of a record-setting year.
I look forward to the year ahead as we honor the List Visual Arts Center’s fortieth anniversary and chart an ambitious path forward for the museum.
Thank you,
