Smithsonian Institution FUTURES Show: An Invitation for Everyone to Imagine the Future

Neil Koenig, ideaXme interviewer, senior television producer and journalist, interviews Rachel Goslins, Director of the Arts and Industries Building, at the Smithsonian Institution.

Neil Koenig comments:

What does the future mean to you? A forthcoming exhibition in America’s capital city will attempt to help visitors to answer this question. The Arts and Industries Building (AIB) in Washington DC is one of the oldest parts of America’s vast Smithsonian Institution. It originally opened in 1881 as the first national museum in the US.

Over the years, millions of visitors have experienced world-changing inventions like the electric light bulb, the steam locomotive and Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone at AIB. After almost a century of showing exhibits such as these, the building’s 100,000 square foot halls closed completely in 2004. AIB will be relaunched soon with a new exhibition, called FUTURES.

This multidisciplinary project will feature artefacts drawn from the Smithsonian’s vast collection and research centres, as well as large-scale commissioned artworks and dozens of interactive exhibits, with the aim of “encouraging visitors to embrace their own role in shaping what is to come”.

In this ideaXme interview, AIB Director Rachel Goslins talks to journalist and producer Neil Koenig about re-launching a museum in the middle of a pandemic; the wider challenges facing the museum sector; and her goals for the FUTURES show, and the original research under-pinning it, which reveals that what most of us want from the future is “not flying cars and robots” but values like “peacefulness and sustainability”.

RACHEL GOSLINS, FIRST DIRECTOR OF THE ARTS AND INDUSTRIES BUILDING

Rachel Goslins has more than 20 years of experience across the worlds of art, law and public policy. Before her new role as AIB’s Director, Rachel served as Executive Director of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, advising the Obama White House on cultural policy from 2009 to 2015. Under her tenure, the Committee spearheaded campaigns of cultural diplomacy and national investment in the arts, including: the Turnaround Arts project, the first federally-led, public-private partnership to introduce arts education programs to low-performing elementary schools, and Film Forward, which recovered and restored Haitian art and artefacts endangered by the 2010 earthquake and its aftermath. Earlier, Rachel founded a documentary production company, directing feature documentaries for the Public Broadcasting Service, Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel and History. She is a 2012 Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute. VIDEO AND IMAGE CREDITS Contemporary images of Arts + Industries Building and portrait of Rachel Goslins by Farrah Sheiky All video b-roll and images courtesy Smithsonian except: Images of FUTURES exhibition, renderings courtesy Rockwell group. me + you in the Smithsonian’s Arts + Industries Building, rendering, courtesy Reddymade. Pegasus' vehicle, 2020, Virgin Hyperloop, courtesy Virgin Hyperloop. Goddard 1935 A-Series Rocket, 1935, Robert H. Goddard, courtesy National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution. Water Harvester, Waha, Inc. courtesy Waha, Inc.

LINKS

Rachel Goslins https://www.si.edu/about/bios/rachel-... FUTURES exhibition at the Arts and Industries Building

https://www.si.edu/exhibitions/future...

ideaXme https://radioideaxme.com

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