The Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT was founded in 1967 by artist and teacher György Kepes

György Kepes

György Kepes was a Hungarian-born painter, designer, educator and art theorist. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1937, he taught design at the New Bauhaus in Chicago...

. Kepes, who taught at the new Bauhaus

Bauhaus

', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...

 in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, originally founded the Center as a way to encourage artistic collaboration on a large civic scale.

Some of the Center's fellows have included such notable artists as Otto Piene

Otto Piene

Otto Piene is a German artist. He lives and works in Düsseldorf and Groton, Massachusetts.-Biography:...

, Vassilakis Takis, Jack Burnham

Jack Burnham

Jack Wesley Burnham Jr. is an American writer on art and technology, who taught art history at Northwestern University and the University of Maryland...

, Stan VanDerBeek

Stan Vanderbeek

Stan Vanderbeek was an American experimental filmmaker.- Life :VanDerBeek studied art and architecture first at Cooper Union College in New York and then at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he met architect Buckminster Fuller, composer John Cage, and choreographer Merce Cunningham...

, Maryanne Amacher

Maryanne Amacher

Maryanne Amacher was an American composer and installation artist.-Biography:Amacher was born in Kane, Pennsylvania, to an American nurse and a Swiss freight train worker. As the only child, she grew up playing the piano. Amacher left Kane to attend the University of Pennsylvania on a full...

, Joan Brigham, Lowry Burgess

Lowry Burgess

Lowry Burgess is an internationally renowned conceptual and environmental artist and educator. He has been an educator for over forty five years and is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University where he is a Distinguished Fellow in the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry...

, Peter Campus

Peter Campus

Peter Campus, is an American born artist, known for his pioneering interactive and single channel video work of the early 1970s, alongside an extensive body of photographic and digital video works to the present day...

, Muriel Cooper

Muriel Cooper

Muriel Cooper was a digital designer, business woman, researcher, and educator.Cooper received her BA from Ohio State in 1944, and a BFA in Design and a BS in Education from Massachusetts College of Art. After her graduation, Cooper moved to New York City and attempted to find a position in...

, Douglas Davis

Douglas Davis (artist)

Douglas Davis is an American artist, critic, teacher, and writer born in 1933 in Washington, D.C..-Artistic career:In 1977, at the opening of documenta 6, alongside Nam June Paik and Joseph Beuys, Douglas Davis took part in one of the first international satellite telecasts with his live...

, Charlotte Moorman

Charlotte Moorman

Madeline Charlotte Moorman Garside was an American cellist and performance artist.She was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. She studied cello from age ten and won a scholarship to Centenary College where she took her B.A. in music in 1955. She received her M.A...

, Antoni Muntadas

Antoni Muntadas

Antoni Muntadas is a multidisciplinary, media artist, sometimes also referred to as Antonio Muntadas or, simply, Muntadas. Since 1971, he lives and works in New York. Muntadas was a Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT,1977–1984, and is currently Visiting Professor with...

, Yvonne Rainer

Yvonne Rainer

Yvonne Rainer is an American dancer, choreographer and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is frequently challenging and experimental. Her work is classified as minimalist art.- Early life :...

, Dieter Jung (artist)

Dieter Jung (artist)

Dieter Jung is a German artist working in the field of holography, painting and installation art. He lives and works in Berlin.- Education :...

 , Piotr Kowalski

Piotr Kowalski

Piotr Kowalski was an artist, sculptor, and architect. He was born 2 March, 1927, in Poland, and died 7 January 2004 in Paris.Piotr Kowalski worked in non-traditional materials including electronic and mechanical devices, neon, large earth works, explosions and other natural phenomena including...

, Alan Sonfist

Alan Sonfist

Alan Sonfist is a New York City based American artist most often associated with the Land or Earth Art movement.He is best known for his "Time Landscape" found on the corner of West Houston Street and LaGuardia Place in New York City's Greenwich Village. Proposed in 1965, "Time Landscape" the...

, Aldo Tambellini, Joe Davis

Joe Davis (artist)

Joe Davis is a research affiliate in the Department of Biology at MIT and in the George Church Laboratory at Harvard Medical School. His research and art includes work in the fields of molecular biology, bioinformatics, "space art", and sculpture, using media including but not limited to...

, Bill Seaman, Alejandro Sina, Don Ritter

Don Ritter

Don Ritter is a Canadian installation artist and writer living in Berlin, Germany. He has been active in the field of new media art since the mid-1980s. His work consists primarily of large interactive video and sound installations that audiences control through their body position, body movement...

, Luc Courchesne, and Bill Parker.

In 1974, Otto Piene succeeded Kepes as the director of the Center. Piene retired in 1994 and the Center was taken over by Krzysztof Wodiczko

Krzysztof Wodiczko

Krzysztof Wodiczko, born April 16th 1943, is an artist renowned for his large-scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments...

, who, after a hiatus, presently continues as director.

In 2004, Wodiczko brought on board a new staff including Associate Director Larissa Harris, Meg Rotzel and Joe Zane

Joe Zane

Joe Zane is an American artist. His work uses painting, sculpture, video and performance to address the themes of authenticity and the role of the artist...

. Since then, the Center has begun a revitalization program which includes numerous site visits by notable artists, long-term residencies, and the commissioning of new artistic projects. Some of the recent visitors has included Marjetica Potrc

Marjetica Potrc

Marjetica Potrč is an artist and architect based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her interdisciplinary practice includes on-site projects, research, architectural case studies, and series of drawings...

, Miranda July

Miranda July

Miranda July is a performing artist, writer, actress and film director. Born Miranda Jennifer Grossinger, she works under the surname of "July," which can be traced to a character from a "girlzine" Miranda created with high school friend Johanna Fateman, called Snarla.- Background :Miranda...

, Vito Acconci

Vito Acconci

Vito Hannibal Acconci is a Bronx, New York-born, Brooklyn-based designer, landscape architect, performance and installation artist.-Education:...

, Simon Starling

Simon Starling

Simon Starling is an English conceptual artist and was the winner of the 2005 Turner Prize. He lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin, and is a professor of art at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main.-Biography:...

, Harrell Fletcher

Harrell Fletcher

Harrell Fletcher is an American artist in Portland, Oregon who creates socially engaged interdisciplinary projects.-Early work:While completing his degree at California College of Arts and Crafts, Fletcher began collaborating with artist Jon Rubin...

, John Malpede, David Robbins

David Robbins

David Robbins is an artist and writer who was one of the first to investigate the art world's entrance into the culture industry....

, Fritz Haeg

Fritz Haeg

Fritz Haeg was trained as an architect, but his current work spans a range of disciplines and media including gardens, dance, performance, design, installation, ecology and architecture, most of which is commissioned and presented by art museums and institutions...

, and Mel Chin

Mel Chin

Mel Chin is a conceptual visual artist. Motivated largely by political, cultural, and social circumstances, Chin works in a variety of art media to calculate meaning in modern life. Chin places art in landscapes, in public spaces, and in gallery and museum exhibitions, but his work is not limited...

.

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