MIT Museum Visit: Self-Oiling Sculpture and Smashed Pianos

On Monday, my little brother Peter and I visited the MIT Museum.

I think my favorite part was the surrealist kinematic sculpture by Arthur Ganson.

This machine pours oil on itself over and over:

This one is a small model cat on a platform that moves back and forth while a chair bounces up and down on it:

This one is a small yellow chair trundling about the surface of a flat rock:

This exhibit also caught my eye. It's a telegram of congratulations from President Nixon to an MIT researcher who had just won the Nobel Prize, followed by the researcher's reply. The content of the reply? Essentially, "Glad you appreciated it. Please end the Vietnam War." I thought that was pretty great.

This exhibit commemorates the annual habit of a particular dorm: throwing a piano off the dorm's roof. The wreckage of one such piano was considered museum-worthy.