The List Visual Arts Center is a creative laboratory that provides artists with a space to freely experiment and push existing boundaries; is highly respected as one of the most significant university art galleries in the country for its innovative, provocative, and scholarly exhibitions and publications.

As the contemporary art museum at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the List Center presents a dynamic program of six to nine special exhibitions in its galleries annually, including a program of evolving site-specific work by emerging artists known as List Projects, as well as a broad range of educational programs, events, and scholarly publications.

Beyond the full slate of special exhibitions and projects it presents each year, the List Center maintains and adds to MIT’s permanent collection; commissions new works through the MIT Percent-for-Art program, a collection of more than 50 site-specific artworks throughout the campus; and oversees the Student Loan Art Program, which lends approximately 600 works of art annually to MIT undergraduate and graduate students.

Originally named the Hayden Gallery, MIT established this center for the visual arts in 1950 to provide a dedicated structure upon which to build the institute’s existing relationship to the arts. It was renamed the List Visual Arts Center in 1985 in recognition of a gift from Vera and Albert List, and relocated to its current, expanded location in the Wiesner Building, which was designed by MIT Alumnus I. M. Pei (B.S. Architecture, 1940) and Partners Architects.

Alexander Calder

Antony Gormley

Carissa Rodriguez

Dara Birnbaum

© MIT List Visual Arts Center

Mary Lucier