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Francesca Majluf ‘17 is the President of MIT’s Arts Curation and Exhibition Club (ACEC)  in McCormick Hall.

“Not only do I love making art, but I also am fascinated by other people’s art,” said Majluf. “They tell so much about an individual and everything around them. I could spend entire days at art museums and not get bored! This is what made me join the curator team.”
 
Majluf started drawing and painting at the age of seven and continues to do so on campus, making this creative outlet an imperative mental break from the technical properties of psets. She engages in another form of visual art through MIT’s competitive ballroom dance team, practicing about 10 hours a week. Furthermore, Majluf shares her passion with the community by teaching a class in art once a semester through the Education Studies Program.
 
Not only are the arts a respite and focus of community enrichment for Majluf, they also align with her academic and career interests. Majluf is ChemE with a concentration in environmental studies and a minor in atmospheric chemistry. She wants to use her education to develop instruments to eliminate anthropogenic air pollution. This passion comes from her love of nature, which she connects back to her interests in the arts. “In my opinion, nature is the ultimate artwork,” said Majluf. “Everything is perfectly designed and infinitely beautiful. I fell in love with nature for this, and oftentimes I feature nature in my artwork for the same reason.”
 
While the logic of STEM fields and the expressiveness of art may seem like polar opposites, prominent scientists have demonstrated that the seemingly antithetic fields actually draw upon similar capacities such as high degrees of conceptual thinking. Some of the most innovative designs and paradigm-shifting ideas have emerged at the hybridization of the artistic creativity and technical prowess. Leonardo da Vinci constantly fused art, science, and engineering and theoretical physicist Albert Einstein played the violin and piano and said “the greatest scientists are artists as well.”
 
The ACEC is a space for the next da Vincis and Einsteins to find inspiration, where the next generation of scientists, mathematicians, and engineers at MIT can create, celebrate, and value the aesthetics of   art in a STEM community. “I adore MIT and everything that it encompasses, and being able to better the life of students with the beautify of an art gallery is priceless,” said Majluf about the impact of the promotion of the arts on a technical campus. The MIT Center for Art, Science, and Technology (CAST) is another on-campus program that uses an academic structure to promote this synergy.
 
The current ACEC exhibit is Tonal Tenacity, a visual representation of the significance of music to the artists. Expect the next showcase to open in April. Check out past collections on ACEC’s webpage.