In 1946 Kepes went to MIT to teach visual design at the Department of Architecture. With books such asLanguage of Vision (published in 1944 while teaching at Brooklyn College), The New Landscape in Art and Scienceand the publication series Vision + Value, he developed groundbreaking approaches to the interdisciplinary interplay of art, science and society. His central concern was to convey the educational benefits of visual design, communication and culture to a broad public.
A central preoccupation in his artistic experimentation was light as a democratic medium. In 1950 he installed a Kinetic Outdoor Light Mural for a Radio Shack store in Boston, a project demonstrating his interest in working with scientific formal language in urban space, and thus carrying it into people’s everyday lives. With the term “Civic Art,” Kepes developed a concept in which art was to play a central role in the education and emancipation of society.
