Opening 2030
Science was always human.
A Timeline of Wonder
The future has ancestors.
Before science had institutions, it had witnesses. People watching the sky, listening to plants, shaping fire, and turning survival into art.
Ancient · Global
Before the Institution
Stars, seeds, bodies, fire, rhythm, language, and land.
Sky Watchers
Indigenous Astronomy
65,000 BCE
65,000 years of celestial knowledge.
Midwives & Healers
Body Knowledge
Deep Time
The first scientists of survival.
“Some studied stars. Some studied soil. Some studied the body, the garment, the ritual, the archive, and the dream.”
3000 BCE – 1500 CE
Cities of Wonder
Libraries, temples, textiles, trade, medicine, and mathematics as public life.
Great Zimbabwe
Stone City
1100–1450 CE
Trade, astronomy, and architecture without mortar.
Timbuktu
City of Manuscripts
12th–16th Century
Libraries holding centuries of African scholarship.
Tang Dynasty China
Paper, Porcelain, Silk
618–907 CE
Inventions that changed the world.
Ban Zhao
Historian & Astronomer
45–116 CE
First known female Chinese historian.
Al-Khwarizmi
Algebra & Algorithm
780–850 CE
He gave mathematics its vocabulary.
Maya Mathematics
Zero and the cosmos
250–900 CE
They conceived zero and tracked Venus.
Inca Engineering
Terraces and stars
1400–1533 CE
Agriculture aligned to the cosmos.
Nok Iron Workers
Nigeria
500 BCE
Tools and sculpture in the same fires.
Kushite Metallurgists
Meroë, Sudan
800 BCE–350 CE
Industrial center of the ancient world.
Haya Steel
Lake Victoria
500 BCE
High-carbon steel, 2,000 years early.
2650 BCE – Present
The Artist as Scientist
From ancient body art to modern canvas, artists have always been anatomists, chemists, and observers of the human condition.
Imhotep
First Polymath
2650–2600 BCE
Architect, physician, and anthropologist of cave art. He studied ancient depictions—full lips, varied body forms—documenting how earlier peoples saw themselves.
Egyptian Body Art
Kohl, Henna, Pigment
3000 BCE
Cosmetics as chemistry, protection, and ritual.
Pliny the Elder
Naturalist & Encyclopedist
23–79 CE
He catalogued pigments, dyes, and the art of portraiture as natural science.
Sofonisba Anguissola
Portrait Painter
1532–1625
First internationally recognized woman artist.
Artemisia Gentileschi
Baroque Painter
1593–1656
She painted women as subjects, not objects.
Frida Kahlo
Pain, Body, Identity
1907–1954
She turned her broken body into a laboratory of self-examination.
Kara Walker
Silhouette & History
1969–Present
She dissects America through shadow and form.
Wangechi Mutu
Sculpture & Mythology
1972–Present
She sculpts hybrid bodies from bronze and dreams.
Gisela Colon
Light & Organic Minimalism
1966–Present
Her monoliths breathe with iridescent light.
“Discovery has never belonged to one civilization, one gender, one empire, or one kind of genius.”
“All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”
— Toni Morrison
Across Time
Beyond the Binary
Gender, identity, and craft as sites of knowledge.
We'wha
Zuni Lhamana
1849–1896
Two-Spirit weaver, potter, and cultural ambassador.
Claude Cahun
Surrealist & Resistance
1894–1954
They photographed the self as infinite.
1860–1980
Culture as Laboratory
Art, ritual, movement, and memory as forms of inquiry.
Hilma af Klint
Abstraction & Invisible Worlds
1862–1944
She painted the cosmos before abstraction had a name.
Zora Neale Hurston
Anthropology & Folklore
1891–1960
She documented Black life as living science.
Katherine Dunham
Dance & Anthropology
1909–2006
Movement as research, Caribbean ritual as text.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Painting & Systems
1960–1988
He studied food, poverty, and power on canvas.
Buckminster Fuller
Design Science
1895–1983
He asked how to make the world work for everyone.
El Anatsui
Sculpture & Memory
1944–Present
He transforms discarded metal into monuments.
Teresia Teaiwa
Pacific Studies & Poetry
1968–2017
She wove island knowledge into new forms of scholarship.
Theaster Gates
Art & Urban Renewal
1973–Present
He turns abandoned buildings into temples of culture.
20th Century
Those Who Changed the Field
Discovery often arrives first as refusal.
Lise Meitner
Nuclear Physics
1878–1968
She discovered fission. The Nobel went to her partner.
George Washington Carver
Botany & Sustainability
1864–1943
He saw abundance where others saw waste.
Percy Julian
Chemistry & Medicine
1899–1975
He synthesized life-saving drugs from soybeans.
W.E.B. Du Bois
The Philadelphia Negro
1899
He turned data into art. His visualizations made Black life visible to science.
Chien-Shiung Wu
Physics
1912–1997
She disproved parity. Others received the Nobel.
César Lattes
Particle Physics
1924–2005
He discovered the pion in the Bolivian Andes.
Octavia Butler
Biology, Power & Future Worlds
1947–2006
She wrote survival as science fiction.
Wangari Maathai
Ecology & Repair
1940–2011
She planted 30 million trees.
“Before science was institutional, it was sung.”
20th–21st Century
The Body as Blueprint
Fashion, architecture, and design turned materials into meaning.
Lina Bo Bardi
Architecture & Public Life
1914–1992
She built museums as living rooms for cities.
Iris van Herpen
Fashion & Biomimicry
1984–Present
Technology and movement as couture.
Mapuche Ecology
Land Stewardship
600 BCE–Present
Forest, river, and mountain as kin.
Amazonian Botany
Plant Medicine
3000 BCE–Present
Pharmacopoeias the West is only beginning to understand.
2026–2030
The Museum Begins
A Science Museum opens its doors in 2030.
Riana Lynn
Founder
Present
Scientist, philanthropist, and architect of wonder.
A Science Museum · 2025
2025 Grantees
Announced
We fund the curious, the brave, and the necessary.
Biodesigner & Material Alchemist
Alicia Valdés
Latin America
Material Futures
She transforms living matter into new materials, bridging ancient craft and biological innovation.
Ecological Storyteller & Land Steward
Dominique Drakeford
United States
Land Memory Project
She weaves narratives of soil, ancestry, and restoration into paths toward ecological justice.
Eat Art Pioneers
honey & bunny
Austria
Food Performance Archives
Sonja and Martin transform eating into theater, questioning how we consume culture itself.
Multidisciplinary Feminist Artist
Ibtisam Tasnim Zaman
Bangladesh
Bodies in Resistance
She renders the invisible visible, tracing the politics of bodies through textile and image.
Joy Designer
Justin Shiels
United States
Architectures of Joy
He builds spaces where play becomes healing and wonder becomes infrastructure.
Art Curator & Cultural Memory Architect
Lauren Jackson
United States
Archive of Belonging
She curates memory itself, building collections that refuse to let stories disappear.
Community Ag Leader
Mackenzie Perkins
United States
Roots & Futures
She cultivates food systems that feed both bodies and communities, seed by seed.
2026
Adult Science Fair merges into A Science Museum
The project that began as Adult Science Fair evolves into its permanent home.
The lineage continues.
Our 2026 grantees carry discovery into new forms: art, science, fashion, food, technology, ecology, entrepreneurship, public memory, and cultural repair.
A Science Museum · 2026
Announcing the 2026 Mikki Prize Grantees
May 28, 2026
We fund the curious, the brave, and the necessary.
The Future
Opening 2030
A home for grantees, dreamers, scientists, poets, engineers, artists, healers, and children who still believe mystery matters.
asciencemuseum.com
Ancient Knowledge
Scroll to explore
Opening 2030