The main MIT library, housing the collections of science, music, and humanities and the institute archives, also serves as a gallery for temporary exhibitions. From Memorial Drive, a large grass lawn features as its sole ornament a Corten steel sculpture expressing energy and motion; Angola (1968), by Isaac Witkin, is set before a two-story facade with nine glass bays. Designed about a central courtyard featuring three Jacques Lipchitz sculptures (including The Birth of the Muses [1941]), the building is composed of glass and limestone facades, which evoke Welles Bosworth's original Classical Revival building (MT1). But variations are evident in the windows; constituting the principal vertical element of the facades, they project from, rather than recede into, the wall. Major sculptural works enhance the building, both inside and outside: for example, Dimitri Hadzi's Elmo-MIT (1963), Ellsworth Kelly's Curve (1974), Auguste Rodin's Large Head of Iris (c. 1890), and Antoine Bourdelle's Tragic Mask of Beethoven (1901).
Hayden Library (Bldg. 14)
1949, Vorhees, Walker, Foley and Smith and Anderson and Beckwith. 160 Memorial Dr.