Who lives in the future is a Museum: visibility regimes and the construction of the future in the museological field

Abstract:

This article aims to analyze the growing relationship between museums and the future by investigating how institutions such as the Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro, the Futurium in Berlin, and the Museum of the Future in Dubai have incorporated images of the future into their exhibitions and institutional discourses. The research adopts a qualitative, exploratory approach, grounded in theoretical review and documentary analysis of materials produced by the museums studied and by international organizations. The results indicate that, although traditionally associated with the preservation of the past, contemporary museums have increasingly become spaces of future visibility, structuring narratives that alternate between catastrophic scenarios and utopian visions. Since the eighteenth century, it is already possible to observe signs of a connection between museums and the future - a connection that intensifies today through trends such as globalization, the intensive use of digital technologies, and the formation of international networks dedicated to anticipation. However, the study also reveals contradictions in this process, showing how discourses on sustainability and innovation can be mobilized to legitimize economic interests and dynamics of urban exclusion. It concludes that future-oriented museums not only project possibilities but also engage in disputes over the meanings of time, revealing that contemporary experience is structured through the simultaneity of memory and anticipation, thus redefining the social role of museums in the present.

Keywords:
museums and the future; regimes of visibility; museum networks; futures literacy; contemporary museology