Gyorgy Kepes (Excerpt)

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SPEAKER 1: I grew up after the First World War, and it had many both tragedies and hopes. Usually when you are seeing very dark, then you have at least dreams of much light. And so that was my own life, always confronting with sadness or the tragedies of social and personal life. And I was hoping to compensate for the missing part by dreaming about much better worlds than I had.

MIT was-- during the time I came, the very end of the Second World War-- it was really just the origin of the world. It had a tremendous competence in producing intelligent weapons without heart. And so when I came, I was practically shocked. But I was lucky enough because I had a few good friends at MIT administration.

And I still feel that schools like yours and mine, or MIT, had an immense, and still has an immense, role in piloting not just in knowledge but the heart of the knowledge and create circumstances which really raise the level of awareness of all problems, not just artistic problems, but all problems.