The Council for the Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a national, volunteer organization of alumni and friends established to support the creative and performing arts at the Institute. Founded in 1972 by MIT President Jerome B. Wiesner, the Council for the Arts has steadfastly maintained its charter statement: "to foster the arts at MIT ... [and] ... to act as a catalyst for the development of a broadly based highly participatory program in the arts."

Appointed by the President of MIT to three-year terms, Council members work in partnership with MIT's Associate Provost for the Arts to provide enriching opportunities in the arts for all members of the MIT community. The singular challenge for the Council derives from its members' role as advocates for the arts at an educational institution preeminent worldwide in science and engineering. Throughout its history, the Council has recognized that creativity lies at the heart of MIT's identity, whether in the fields of civil engineering and physics or in the disciplines of architecture and music.

Governed by an Executive Committee, the Council pursues its mission through the year-long work of its ten standing and two prize committees. The Council for the Arts provides critical support for many performances, exhibitions, arts facilities, and cocurricular activities at MIT. Annual support is allocated to the Artists-inResidence program, the List Visual Arts Center, the MIT Museum, and arts communication efforts. All Council programs and activities are made possible solely though the annual gifts of Council members and friends, or revenue from endowments established by the Council.

Perhaps the Council is best known on campus for its unparalleled Grants Program which since 1974 has awarded over $1,000,000 to more than one thousand arts projects created by MIT students, staff and faculty. The Grants Committee, drawn from the Council's ranks, reviews applications in all arts disciplines to evaluate the quality of each proposal and its potential for broad participation by the MIT community, especially students. Projects made possible with Council support include:

• A performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, conducted by John Oliver, Director of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, featuring over 150 students of the MIT Concert Choir, Chamber Chorus, and MIT Symphony Orchestra;
• A student-organized poetry reading series of readings by such renowned poets as A.R. Ammons, Mary Oliver, and Galway Kinnell;
• A film and lecture series, "Visions and Image: Black Women Filmmakers";
• Student Art Association purchases of photography equipment, an etching press, and a state-of-the-art ceramic kiln.
• An exhibition and symposium, "Demarcating Lines: Urban Projects for Beirut by Young Architects" at the MIT Museum, organized by the Department of Architecture and the American University in Beirut.

Since 1982, the Council has underwritten MIT's membership at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to provide all MIT students with free admission and other member benefits. Student excursions to professional music, dance, and theater performances ranging from the classical to the avant-garde are sponsored by the Council's "Performing Arts Excursions " series. In the fall of 1994, the Council arranged a new program with the Boston Symphony Orchestra to offer free tickets to MIT students for selected BSO performances.

Council members have been responsible, in large measure, for the development of MIT's permanent collection of paintings, sculpture, drawings and photography. Significant works of art may be found in private offices and corridors, and largescale sculptures by artists such as Henry Moore, Louise Nevelson, and Jacques Lipchitz grace the campus. The popular Student Art Loan Program, through which MIT students may select by lottery original works on paper or photographs for their dormitory rooms and living spaces, was established primarily through donations of art from Council members.

Individual Council members also regularly contribute gifts to specific arts programs or to "special projects" identified by the Associate Provost for the Arts as a priority for the MIT arts community. Recent examples include the construction of music practice rooms for students, a new home for all theater-design classes and workshops, the creation of the Berenice Abbott Photography Laboratory, an annual forum on issues in contemporary art, a student "Playwrights in Performance" series, and an annual architecture exhibition at the MIT Museum.

Annual arts awards endowed by Council members are presented to MIT students (the Laya and Jerome Wiesner Student Art Awards and the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts), MIT faculty (the Gyorgy Kepes Fellowship Prize), and individual artists for the highest achievement at the national level whose work the Council believes to be underappreciated (the Eugene McDermott Award).

Now in its third decade of devoted service, the Council for the Arts has been praised by the MET community for enhancing the quality of life on campus and contributing to MIT's reputation as a welcome home for creative artists.

Constitution of the Council for the Arts