MIT MUSEUM UNVEILS JANET ECHELMAN INSTALLATION VISUALIZING THE EARTH’S CLIMATE, FROM THE LAST ICE AGE TO POTENTIAL FUTURES

Cambridge, MA, August 7, 2025 — Today, the MIT Museum announces the opening of Remembering the Future, a large-scale installation by the 2022-2024 MIT Distinguished Visiting Artist Janet Echelman, developed during her residency at the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST). Architect, engineer and MIT Associate Professor Caitlin Mueller collaborated with Echelman on its development, creating a new technology which expanded the possibility for geometric complexity of the form. The installation will be on view through Fall 2027 in the Museum’s lobby, which is free and open to the public. 

Visitors to the MIT Museum will be greeted by Echelman’s draped, vibrant monumental sculpture inspired by climate data from the last ice age and into multiple potential futures, suspended from the ceiling and cascading above the grand staircase of the MIT Museum’s lobby. Constructed from multi-colored fiber which is braided, knotted and hand-spliced to create a three-dimensional form, the immersive artwork greets visitors with its grand scale presiding over the lobby. Featuring a transforming gradient transforming from orange to blue, Remembering the Future provides a dramatic gateway into the museum, and when illuminated at night, it creates a sculptural beacon and focal point in MIT’s Kendall Square campus. 

The title Remembering the Future was inspired by the quotation commonly attributed to Søren Kierkegaard: “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.” As the culmination of three years of dedicated research and collaboration, this site-specific installation explores Earth’s climate timeline, translating historical records and possible futures into sculptural form. 

This theme is further activated through an interactive digital twin created by Mueller, that enables visitors to learn about designing lightweight, efficient structures that utilize tension for stability. Mueller’s digital kiosk invites visitors to directly engage a version of the technical tools developed by Professor Mueller’s Digital Structures group, digitally adjusting Remembering the Future’s netted ropes, illuminating the engineering forces involved, and highlighting how equilibrium is achieved in real time. 

The exhibition includes large-scale video, providing visitors with views of Echelman’s civic installations and soft structures on five continents which provide a new model of cityscape forms. 

Above: Rendering of Remembering the Future by Janet Echelman; Courtesy of Studio Echelman

The development of the installation was guided by climate scientist MIT Professor Raffaele Ferrari, co-director of the MIT Lorenz Center using an application programming interface that links En-ROADS, which can predict regional changes in climate variables. With a climate model emulator developed as part of MIT’s Bringing Computation to the Climate Challenge project, Remembering the Future leverages this technology to visualize Earth’s climate futures. 

Remembering the Future is the first in a series of four new exhibitions that launch the MIT Museum’s inaugural thematic season, TIME, a year-long focus bringing together programming that provides a conceptual, educational and thoughtful look at our ever-changing understanding and complex relationship with the subject.

Above: Artist Janet Echelman and MIT Associate Professor Caitlin Mueller; Courtesy of Heidi Erickson

The Mark R. Epstein (Class of 1963) Director, MIT Museum Michael John Gorman said: “Janet Echelman’s new work, designed with the aid of Caitlin Mueller’s extraordinary soft structural engineering, is a subtle yet pressing invitation to contemplate our own agency in shaping possible climate futures at a pivotal moment for our planet. Do we really want to remember the future that we will never have? This suspended structure marks the beginning of a new era of investigation for the MIT Museum and invites us to cross the threshold into designing more sustainable futures.”

Artist Janet Echelman said, “The seed for this artwork grew from my own need to contemplate our climate within a larger context of time. This installation is a focal point for silent contemplation. I believe that accepting the magnitude of past and ongoing losses is a step towards gaining agency to shape the future we want. The deep expertise and innovative mindset within the MIT ecosystem were essential to realizing this project. I am especially grateful to the generosity of my collaborators: Caitlin Mueller and the Digital Structures Lab, the MIT Museum and CAST, and the MIT climate science research community.”

Caitlin Mueller, MIT Associate Professor from the Departments of Architecture and of Civil & Environmental Engineering Associate Professor, said, "Collaborating closely with Janet Echelman and her studio has provided a powerful opportunity for our technical research in computational design to develop in original directions driven by artistic intent, with broader engineering and functional applications emerging from this creative process in surprising ways."

NOTES TO EDITORS:

About the MIT Museum:

The MIT Museum welcomes all to participate in MIT’s unique culture of problem-solving and playful creativity, bringing together science, technology, art and design in surprising ways to explore potential futures.. 

In addition to exhibitions, programs, a maker hub and learning labs, the museum invites visitors to take part in on-going research while demonstrating how science and innovation will shape the future of society. In October 2022, a reinvented  MIT Museum opened in a new location in the heart of Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA.

Highlights of the Museum include freshly conceived exhibitions featuring objects from the Museum’s prodigious collections of over 1.5 million objects, along with loans of art and other objects; the Lee Family Exchange event space for public dialogue and conversation; the hands-on Heide Maker Hub, where audiences can create and invent; and an expanded MIT Museum Store. 

The MIT Museum is open daily 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. 

For more information, including accessibility and amenities, please visit mitmuseum.mit.edu

Address: MIT Museum, Gambrill Center, 314 Main Street (MIT Building E28), Cambridge, MA 02142.

Located next to the Kendall/MIT MBTA Red Line stop at the new Kendall Gateway to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Campus. Museum Director, Michael John Gorman; Director of Exhibitions, Ann Neurmann. 

About MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology

A major cross-school initiative, the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) creates new opportunities for art, science and technology to thrive as interrelated, mutually informing modes of exploration, knowledge and discovery. CAST’s multidisciplinary platform presents performing and visual arts programs, supports research projects for artists working with science and engineering labs, and sponsors classes, exhibitions, design studios, lectures, publications, symposia, and workshops. ​ Evan Ziporyn, Faculty Director; Leila W. Kinney, Executive Director.

CAST Melon Distinguished Visiting Artist Residency 

The CAST Visiting Artists program is distinctive for its emphasis on the research and development phase of artistic work. ​ In addition to presenting new work, residencies embed artists in the ongoing research and teaching at MIT, where scientists and engineers are open to artists’ speculative and hands-on way of working. ​ The program hosts artists from a wide range of visual and performing arts disciplines each academic year, exposing students to the creative process and fostering cross-fertilization among disciplines. The CAST Mellon Distinguished Visiting Artist program, which launched in Fall 2016, creates the opportunity for artists to shape new creative projects over a period of two years of sustained, in-depth research and development. Janet Echelman was the 2022-24 CAST Mellon Distinguished Visiting Artist.

About Studio Echelman

Studio Echelman explores the cutting edge of sculpture, public art, and urban transformation. Assembled and led by internationally recognized sculptor Janet Echelman, the design team focuses on the development and creation of large-scale artworks. The design team spans the globe and includes architects, aeronautical and mechanical engineers, lighting designers, computer scientists, landscape architects, and fabricators.The permanent and temporary projects draw inspiration from ancient craft and combine technology to create living, breathing pieces that respond to the forces of nature. These sculpture environments embody local identity and invite people to form a personal and dynamic relationship with art and place.

Embracing change is central to the meaning and physical manifestation of the art. Viewers experience artwork that is always changing, as the soft surfaces of fiber or mist sculptures are constantly billowing and adapting their shape in response to the ever-changing patterns of wind and sunlight. At night, the perceived color slowly changes through the addition of programmed projections of colored LED lighting. In daylight, viewers see the embedded physical color of the fiber material, which also changes gradually through time.

Projects are designed according to the climate and intended lifespan for each site and context.