Smithsonian
Futures
Client
Smithsonian Institution
Location
Arts & Industries Building
Smithsonian Institution
Washington D.C.
Sector
Public Space
Cultural Experiences
Size
32,000 sqft
To celebrate the Smithsonian Institution’s 175th anniversary, a year-long exhibition, "FUTURES," is located at the 1881 Arts & Industries Building (AIB). Part exhibition, part festival, "FUTURES" is a prototype for the building’s next big chapter and its first major exhibition in 40 years. Past future-making artifacts sit in conversation with contemporary objects, provoking questions that address both the hopeful and the ambiguous nature of future-casting. "FUTURES" invites artists, designers, and the public to respond to help imagine the many futures that could be.
The LAB at Rockwell Group contributed a unifying and overarching layer of digital storytelling to FUTURES, involving UI/UX design, software development, and graphic design. The digital experience creates a vision of a bright and fulfilling future, in which technology helps rather than hinders, removing obstacles and paving the way for us to be freer, more ourselves, and more human.
Through a series of touch-less interactions, visitors engage with Beacons to contribute their voice to an always shifting portrait of our Future - a data visualization that represents the power of their voices combined.
At the FUTURES exhibit, every guest has power to shape their own positive vision of tomorrow.
Selected Press
12/07/2021, Washington Post — Smithsonian’s ‘Futures’ exhibit encourages visitors to be innovators
12/06/2021, The Eagle — Smithsonian’s ‘FUTURES’ celebrates 175 years
11/26/2021, Wallpaper — Smithsonian exhibition ‘Futures’ explores ‘mind-expanding possibilities’
11/25/2021, The Art Newspaper — Futuristic dreams rub shoulders with everyday innovations in new Smithsonian show
11/21/2021, George Towner — Smithsonian Focuses on the Future with New Exhibit
11/20/2021, Fast Company — This new exhibition helps you visualize the future using gesture-controlled LED screens
11/19/2021, Metropolis — FUTURES Explores the History and Prospects of Innovation
11/19/2021, Smithsonian Magazine — At New ‘Futures’ Show, Big Dreamers and Changemakers Activate a Better Way Forward
11/17/2021, Collect Space — Smithsonian FUTURES exhibit examines space artifacts of the future