Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Advanced Visual Studies records

The Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) was founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967 by Professor György Kepes. Kepes first arrived at MIT in 1946 to teach visual communications. Kepes’ arrival found MIT focused primarily on engineering and science, and not art. He noted that new directions in the world of art would rely on scientific expertise, and proposed that artists and scientists could bring a sense of balance to each others’ fields. This was a core concept behind the founding of the Center, which was ultimately dedicated in 1968 with the Center for Theoretical Physics.

Kepes’ goals for the Center included emphasizing collaborative across previously disparate fields in order to seek out the potential of emerging technologies in the process of creating works of art on a civic scale. To this end, artists, scientists, engineers, and designers would be selected to come to the Center as fellows, and pursue both individual and collaborative projects. Many of the first generation of CAVS Fellows focused on techniques and technologies such as light art and kinetic sculpture.

In 1974, the first international CAVS Fellow, Otto Piene, took over the role of director after Kepes’ retirement. Piene would direct the Center for 20 years until his own retirement in 1994. Piene’s leadership saw a new era of CAVS- a formalization of the academic program as the Master of Science in Visual Studies became MIT’s first graduate degree in the arts. CAVS Fellows took part in more frequent and higher profile projects, such as the Centerbeam kinetic sculpture featured at documenta 6 in 1977 and again on the National Mall at Washington, DC in 1978. The Center also hosted a series of conferences on Sky Art (a term coined by Piene to describe projects using the sky and space as a canvas and/or medium) in the 1980s. During Piene’s tenure, the scope of technologies explored by CAVS Fellows broadened to include steam, laser, holography, environmental sculpture, computer graphics and animation, video, laserdisc, sound, performance, dance, and more.

Following Piene’s retirement, CAVS had a series of directors that included previous Fellow and Director of Projects Elizabeth Goldring, Professor and Fellow Paul Earls, holographer Steve Benton, and Krzyzstof Wodiczko.

In 2010, MIT merged the Center with the Visual Arts Program (VAP) to form the Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT).