MSU Museum Launches Speculative Futures Program Series Exploring Imagination, Identity, and What Comes Next
The MSU Museum announces the launch of Speculative Futures, a new year-long public program series that brings together artists, scholars, and community members to explore how speculative thinking can help us better understand the past, engage the present, and imagine more just and creative futures.
Timed to the United States’ approach to its 250th anniversary, Speculative Futures asks a central question: How do stories, art, science, and culture help us envision what comes next? Through conversations, workshops, performances, and creative making, the series highlights voices and perspectives that broaden our understanding of the American experience and expand ideas of possibility.
The five programs in this series align with heritage and history months, including Black History, Women’s History, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage, Hispanic Heritage, and Native American Heritage Months, and feature interdisciplinary approaches that connect history, technology, art, and cultural understanding.
“Speculative Futures reflects the MSU Museum’s role as a space for curiosity, creativity, and critical dialogue,” said Devon Akmon, director of the MSU Museum. “As we look toward the nation’s 250th anniversary, this series invites our community to think beyond commemoration and instead imagine the futures we want to build together.”
In celebration of Black History Month, the program series kicks off on February 11 with, Speculative Futures: Afrofuturism and the Art of Stacey Robinson. This program will explore how Afrofuturism blends history, technology, and visual culture to reimagine Black identity and possibility. The event features a public conversation with graphic novelist Stacey Robinson followed by a hands-on zine-making workshop that invites participants to translate speculative ideas into creative form.
“Afrofuturism offers an important vision for how our collective action can make a better tomorrow,” said Julian Chambliss, MSU Museum curator and moderator of the first program. “Through this series, we are creating space for people to engage with speculative narratives as tools for reflection, transformation, and hope.”
Speculative Futures is part of the MSU Museum’s broader mission to serve as a creative collaboratory that exists to facilitate experiences at the nexus of arts, sciences, cultures, and technologies. It is a place where disciplines intersect and where students, faculty, artists, and the public can explore complex ideas through dialogue and experience.
All Speculative Futures programs are free and open to the public.