It’s been a few months since we’ve heard any updates on the proposed Museum of Science Fiction. In March, the group working to make the museum a reality ended a months-long IndieGoGo campaign to raise $160,000 towards building a preview museum. That goal fell way short as only about $55,000 was raised.
Speaking with DCist back in December, Museum of Science Fiction Executive Director Greg Viggiano said that the IndieGoGo campaign wasn’t intended to be the main source of income to fund the preview museum, but that they’re “basically using the crowd funding to raise public awareness.”
That goal, Viggiano tells DCist, was wildly successful. Since announcing the intentions to build the museum last fall, the museum has found major partners in The Science Channel and OMNI Reboot, among others, as well as found hundreds of volunteers to help out in any way they can. But now that the groundwork has been laid, Viggiano says they’re entering the next phase, with the ultimate goal of finding a site for a preview museum by the end of the year.
He says they have two potential sites—one in D.C. and another in Northern Virginia—that they’re currently considering. In the meantime, the Museum’s Executive Team is holding a worldwide design competition to come up with the architectural plans for building the preview museum. Right now, Viggiano says that they have 256 architectural registrations from 36 different countries.
Beyond finding a site for the preview museum, the Museum Executive Team is focused on different types of outreach efforts to connect with the D.C. community. One of those is a partnership with D.C. Public Library, which Viggiano says is set to begin in September. “We’ll begin doing events over the course of the fall,” he says. They plan to host film screenings, lectures, discussion panels, and education workshops focused on project-based learning at libraries across the city.
“Project-based learning is very key to the museum’s educational mission,” Viggiano says. “We’ll be bringing in major organizations to work with us and the library, in the context of building curriculum and project-based learning activities for teachers and students.”
On September 25, the design competition will conclude with an award ceremony at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, where they’ll announce the winning architectural design for the preview museum.
The last goal that the Museum Executive Team is hoping to hit by the end of the year is raising enough money to build the preview museum. Viggiano won’t say how much they’ve raised so far, as they’re in talks with large corporate sponsors, but he estimates they’ll need about $3 million to open the preview museum (though that’s a very rough estimate).
In the meantime, the Museum of Science Fiction continues to release concept art for what the actual museum could look like, as well as other updates via their Facebook page. It’s still a long ways away until the final museum will become a reality, but Viggiano says they’re focused on the preview museum for now. Once that’s up and running, they’ll use it to help draw funding for the actual museum.
