‘remembering the future’ floats within MIT museum atrium
The MIT Museum presents Remembering the Future, a monumental installation by artist Janet Echelman created in collaboration with architect, engineer, and MIT Associate Professor Caitlin Mueller. Suspended above the museum’s grand lobby and open to the public from September 18th, 2025, through Fall 2027, the work transforms climate data into a three-dimensional form that invites visitors to engage both visually and conceptually.
From the moment visitors enter the MIT Museum, their attention is drawn upward to Echelman’s expansive net sculpture. Braided and hand-spliced fibers in shifting hues of orange and blue stretch across the atrium to form a canopy of color that hovers above the staircase. The multi-layered netting creates a sense of movement as natural light filters through during the day and programmed illumination activates the piece after dark, casting soft reflections on the surrounding walls.
images © Anna Olivella, courtesy MIT Museum
janet echelman works with professor caitlin mueller
The MIT Museum installation is the result of an intensive partnership between artist Janet Echelman and architect Caitlin Mueller, whose work at MIT’s Digital Structures group informed the project’s structural innovation. Together, they developed a new technology that expands the geometric possibilities of tension-based forms. The collaboration demonstrates how architectural engineering and artistic expression can merge to produce lightweight structures that maintain strength and equilibrium.
Remembering the Future draws its form from climate records spanning the last ice age through projections of potential futures. MIT climate scientist Raffaele Ferrari provided data modeling support, using a climate model emulator connected to the En-ROADS platform to simulate regional changes in temperature and atmosphere. This scientific framework shapes the sculpture’s curves and layers, embedding climate research directly into its physical design.
Janet Echelman creates a large-scale fiber installation at the MIT Museum
structural dynamics virtually illustrated
Alongside Janet Echelman’s installation, a digital kiosk created by Mueller allows visitors to the MIT Museum to explore the structural dynamics of the work. Through an interactive interface, guests can adjust a virtual version of the net, observing how tension and balance respond to their input. This hands-on experience reveals the engineering principles that stabilize the sculpture and highlights the precision required to achieve its seemingly effortless suspension.
The work inaugurates the MIT Museum’s thematic season TIME, a year-long program examining the nature of temporal change through art, science, and technology. Large-scale video projections accompany the sculpture, presenting Echelman’s previous civic projects around the world and situating Remembering the Future within her broader practice of creating soft, floating forms that redefine public space.
the sculpture is suspended above the museum lobby staircase
braided and hand-spliced fibers shift in color from orange to blue
Professor Caitlin Mueller collaborates on new tension-based structural technology
climate data from the last ice age shapes the flowing form
an interactive digital twin reveals the forces of tension and balance
the work launches the MIT Museum’s thematic season, TIME
project info:
name: Remembering the Future
artist: Janet Echelman | @janetechelman
architect: Cailtin Mueller | @digitalstructures
location: Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
client: MIT Museum | @mitmuseum
completion: September 18th, 2025
photography: © Anna Olivella
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