Sarah Oppenheimer Selected for Art Commission at MIT, 2026

Sarah Oppenheimer’s practice redefines spatial perception through precise and often dynamic architectural manipulations that are both conceptually rigorous and structurally innovative. 

Oppenheimer’s forthcoming Percent-for-Art commission, N-05001, will be permanently sited in MIT’s Metropolitan Warehouse (Building W41), under renovation by the design studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The building will serve as a center for design research and education, providing a new home for MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) and the MIT Morningside Academy for Design. Oppenheimer’s interdisciplinary, research-driven approach aligns with the center’s mission as a creative hub. 

N-05001 will be grafted onto the MET’s architecture. Traveling along structural beams and moving between floors, the piece migrates through the building’s envelope. A glass column rises and falls along a cantilevered glass beam while a stainless-steel counterweight balances this asymmetric configuration. The work explores how technical objects, architectural environment, and social agency are entwined. Hardwired into the building’s control system, N-05001’s movement responds to real-time occupancy data. Distributed sensors within designated spatial zones register human motion, translating individual actions—walking, pausing, gathering—into data signals that shape the artwork's axial paths. To challenge the perception that architectural space is static, N-05001 moves with intentional slowness. The occupant’s influence is real but deferred. As micro-events accumulate, choreographies unfold beyond immediate perception. N-05001 invites reconsideration of control itself: rather than seeking instant feedback, it expands a field of delayed reciprocity. Cause and effect are stretched across time and space.

In January 2026, Oppenheimer will convene Programming Agency, a three-day workshop open to the MIT community. Seeking to capture “temporal signatures of [a building’s] occupancy,” the session will investigate “how social agency can be experienced across divergent timescales.” The workshop will feature presentations from the artist and her collaborators, seminar-style discussions, and physical experiments using motion-capture simulations. Experiments conducted during the workshop will inform the programmed movement of N-05001, incorporating collective experience into the work’s materialization. Programming Agency is convened by the artist and cohosted by the Met Commons at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P), the MIT List Visual Arts Center, and the Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT) program at MIT.

Sarah Oppenheimer (b. 1972, Austin, TX) operates at the intersection of architecture and art, creating work that reconfigure spatial boundaries. Her projects examine the dynamic relationships between bodies, structures, and systems, drawing attention to the ways environments shape human and nonhuman presence. Oppenheimer’s solo exhibitions include N-03X (EPFL Pavilions, Lausanne, Switzerland; 2023), Sensitive Machine (Wellin Museum of Art, Clinton, NY; 2021), N-01 (Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland; 2020), S-337473 (MASS MoCA; North Adams, MA; 2019), S-337473 (Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; 2017), S-281913 (Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL; 2016), S-399390 (MUDAM Luxembourg; 2016), and 33-D (Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland; 2014). Oppenheimer’s work has also been exhibited at ZKM, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Andy Warhol Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Art Unlimited at Art Basel, the Mattress Factory, the Drawing Center, and SculptureCenter. Oppenheimer is a Professor in the Practice at Yale University School of Art and lives and works in New York and Rotterdam.

Percent-for-Art Selection Committee:

Sarah Oppenheimer was selected for the commission by Percent-for-Art committee members, including Azra Akšamija, Professor, MIT School of Architecture and Planning; Richard Amster, Former Director, MIT Campus Construction; Nicole Bernabei, Senior Project Manager, MIT Campus Construction; Dayna L. Cunningham, Founder and Former Executive Director of MIT Community Innovators Lab (MIT CoLab), MIT Urban Studies and Planning; Ben Gilmartin, Partner, Diller Scofidio + Renfro; Paul C. Ha, Director, MIT List Visual Arts Center; Jola Idowu, Graduate Student (’23), MIT School of Architecture and Planning; Caroline A. Jones, Professor, MIT School of Architecture and Planning; Andrea Leers, Principal, Leers Weinzapfel Associates; Conor McArdle, Video and Digital Content Specialist, MIT Project Manus; Morgan Pinney, Senior Campus Planner, MIT Office of Campus Planning; Greg Raposa, Campus and Space Administrator, MIT Office of the Provost; Brian Tabolt, Senior Associate, Diller Scofidio + Renfro; Lawrence J. Vale, Associate Dean and Ford Professor of Urban Design and Planning, MIT School of Architecture and Planning; Lily Xie, Graduate Student (’23), MIT School of Architecture and Planning; Laura Zaganjori, Graphics Artist, MIT Innovation Initiative.