Welcome To The Future World: Where Art Meets Science

Future world: where art meets science, artscience museum’s new permanent exhibition, puts visitors at the centre of the works, writes Richard Lord.

- Richard Lord

Traditionally, museums and art galleries haven’t been big on interaction; get too close to an exhibit, in fact, and you can usually expect a security guard to growl at you. Singapore’s ArtScience Museum, however, is different: as the first museum in the world exploring the constantly evolving interaction between art, science and technology, part of its mission is to engage visitors by involving them in its exhibitions.

As of March, that mission has risen to a new level, with the opening of Future World: Where Art Meets Science, a landmark permanent exhibition, extending more than 1,500 square metres, a quarter of the museum’s entire space. The exhibition fuses the two areas of focus of the museum with 15 giant technology-driven interactive installations featuring four key narratives – Nature, Town, Park and Space – that marry scientific wonder with sheer dazzling beauty. These are works that require people to complete them, to become part of the work: in this exhibition, interaction is king.

“We wanted to do something that really marks the museum’s reputation and identity as the first art and science museum in the world,” says the museum’s executive director Honor Harger. “Right from its conception we’ve always intended to create a permanent exhibition at ArtScience Museum. Through the past five years we have engaged with our colleagues and audiences to gain a good sense of what the permanent exhibition could look like. Being the world’s first art and science museum, there was always a sense within our team that the permanent exhibition would not just define us as a museum, but would also define the field of art and science.