Artist and designer Es Devlin is the recipient of the 2025 Eugene McDermott Award within the Arts at MIT. The $100,000 prize, to be awarded at a gala in her honor, also includes an artist residency at MIT in spring 2025, during which Es Devlin will present her work in a lecture open to the general public on May 1, 2025.
Devlin’s work explores biodiversity, linguistic diversity, and collective AI-generated poetry, all areas that are also being explored throughout the MIT community. She is understood for public art and installations at major museums corresponding to the Tate Modern, kinetic stage designs for the Metropolitan Opera, the Super Bowl, and the Olympics, in addition to monumental stage sculptures for large-scale stadium concert events.
“I’m all the time most energized by works I even have not yet made, so I’m immensely grateful to have this trust and investment in ideas I’ve yet to conceive,” says Devlin. “I’m honored to receive an award that has been granted to so a lot of my heroes, and stay up for collaborating closely with the good minds at MIT.”
2025 McDermott Announcement
Video: Arts at MIT
“We stay up for presenting Es Devlin with MIT’s highest award in the humanities. Her work will likely be an inspiration for our students studying the visual arts, theater, media, and design. Her interest in AI and the humanities dovetails with a serious initiative at MIT to handle the societal impact of GenAI [generative artificial intelligence],” says MIT vice provost and Ford International Professor of History Philip S. Khoury. “With a brand new performing arts center opening this winter and a campus-wide arts festival happening this spring, there couldn’t be a greater moment to reveal MIT’s creative community to Es Devlin’s extraordinary artistic practice.”
The Eugene McDermott Award within the Arts at MIT recognizes progressive artists working in any field or cross-disciplinary activity. The $100,000 prize represents an investment within the recipient’s future creative work, relatively than a prize for a specific project or lifetime of accomplishment. The official announcement was made on the Council for the Arts at MIT’s 51st annual meeting on Oct. 24. Because it was established in 1974, the award has been bestowed upon 38 individuals who work in performing, visual, and media arts, in addition to authors, art historians, and patrons of the humanities. Past recipients include Santiago Calatrava, Gustavo Dudamel, Olafur Eliasson, Robert Lepage, Audra McDonald, Suzan-Lori Parks, Bill Viola, and Pamela Z, amongst others.
A particular feature of the award is a brief residency at MIT, which incorporates a public presentation of the artist’s work, substantial interaction with students and college, and a gala that convenes national and international leaders in the humanities. The goal of the residency is to supply the recipient with unparalleled access to the creative energy and cutting-edge research on the Institute and to develop mutually enlightening relationships within the MIT community.
The Eugene McDermott Award within the Arts at MIT was established in 1974 by Margaret McDermott (1912-2018) in honor of her husband, Eugene McDermott (1899-1973), a co-founder of Texas Instruments and longtime friend and benefactor of MIT. The award is presented by the Council for the Arts at MIT.
The award is bestowed upon individuals whose artistic trajectory and body of labor have achieved the very best distinction of their field and indicate they’ll remain leaders for years to return. The McDermott Award reflects MIT’s commitment to risk-taking, problem-solving, and connecting creative minds across disciplines.
Es Devlin, born in London in 1971, views an audience as a brief society and infrequently invites public participation in communal choral works. Her canvas ranges from public sculptures and installations at Tate Modern, V&A, Serpentine, Imperial War Museum, and Lincoln Center, to kinetic stage designs on the Royal Opera House, the National Theatre, and the Metropolitan Opera, in addition to Olympic ceremonies, Super Bowl halftime shows, and monumental illuminated stage sculptures for large-scale stadium concert events.
Devlin is the topic of a serious monographic book, “An Atlas of Es Devlin,” described by Thames and Hudson as their most intricate and sculptural publication so far, and a retrospective exhibition on the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in Latest York. In 2020, she became the primary female architect of the U.K. Pavilion at a World Expo, conceiving a constructing which used AI to co-author poetry with visitors on its 20-meter diameter facade. Her practice was the topic of the 2015 Netflix documentary series “Abstract: The Art of Design.” She is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, University of the Arts London, and a Royal Designer for Industry on the Royal Society of Arts. She has been awarded the London Design Medal, three Olivier Awards, a Tony Award, an Ivor Novello Award, doctorates from the Universities of Bristol and Kent, and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire award.
