Acciona Living & Culture’s NEXT IN Summit 2025 conference on April 23/24 was a strong follow-up to the inaugural event last year. It once again delivered the engaging content and topical agenda which have quickly made it an unmissable event for museum professionals.
This year, the theme for the conference was “Culture for a Sustainable Future”.
With high-profile keynotes, including the directors of the Guggenheim, MoMA, and The Prado, as well as celebrated architects, designers, and artists, and an imaginative programme, the event was also elevated by its location at Acciona’s Madrid campus.
The organiser, Acciona Living & Culture, is an award-winning cultural production firm and one of the world’s leading creators of technology-driven immersive exhibits and events for museums and the cultural sector.
The firm is a subsidiary of Acciona, a Spanish multinational corporation and a global leader in renewable energy. As the theme for the NextIn Summit 2025 was sustainability, the company’s stunning campus HQ made for a fitting venue.
The state-of-the-art conference and hospitality facilities, swimming pools and tennis courts are all set within beautiful flowering meadows studded with gorgeous specimen trees. The site is part Tracy Island, part Kew Gardens.
The future of museums at the NEXT IN Summit 2025
Over two packed days, 350 delegates heard about the challenges museums face today and how speakers saw the museums of the future developing.
Sir David Chipperfield is the founder and principal of David Chipperfield Architects and the founder and president of Fundación RIA. He reflected on the role of architecture and cultural buildings in shaping the future.
He also spoke about cultural institutions as social infrastructure and how architects, via design, can address the climate emergency.
“The arts,” he added, “have an essential role as a bridge between the past and the future” and that urban architecture, “should support the community, acting as a driver of social and environmental regeneration through dialogue.”
Elizabeth Diller, partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), showcased the recently opened V&A East Storehouse.
She said, “On average, 3% of a museum’s collection is on display at any given time. The other 97% is hidden away in a basement or off-site in a warehouse.
“And as museums accumulate more collections, the proportion of works on display is just going to diminish over time.”
The V&A East Storehouse addresses this issue by reimagining the whole museum experience. It does so by merging storage, archive, and exhibition spaces to give unprecedented access and a behind-the-scenes look to visitors.
Exploring attendance, AI and growth at NEXT IN
Glenn D. Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, explored the significant impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the museum sector and shared his vision for the future of museums.
In conversation with Miguel Falomir, director of Museo del Prado, Lowry mentioned one very specific challenge US museums were facing. “T.R.U.M.P.. Visitors from Canada fell by 70 to 75% from last year.”
Both Lowry and Falomir, managing huge sites with millions of visitors, didn’t see wanting to attract more people to the museum as a goal.
Instead, they were expecting and looking for growth digitally. As Lowry said, “There is no tablet to say that museums will continue to exist the way they exist now.
“Any real growth is going to come online. We’re at saturation point. The cost of building [additional exhibition space], even if possible, is not the best use of funds.
“AI builds richer and deeper relationships with a public we barely know. AI can collapse the difference between the virtual and the real.”
Falomir added that The Prado’s attendance has grown from 1 million in the 1980s to 3 million today in person and 40 million on social media.
“It’s a delicate situation,” he said, “we’re close to saturation point. We don’t need more visitors, but I am interested in a more diverse audience.”
Miguel Falomir, Director, Museo del PradoWe don’t need any more visitors but I am interested in a more diverse audience.
Regenerative museums
A hot topic at the NEXT IN Summit 2025 was how culture and urban development can be a regenerative force. This suggests a future in which museums can carve out greater relevance and meaning in their communities and beyond.
Hirokazu Tokuyama, curator at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, said that the museum is embedded in the local community. It is part of a long-term project to make Roppongi Hills a model for future urban planning developments.
“How can we connect people and foster a new community after the development? The museum and the building sit in a rich and layered network. Art serves as a bridge to connect and gives an opportunity for the people to communicate.”
Dr. Kate Rogers, executive director at El Alamo Trust, set out the $400 million plan to renovate the Alamo. A much-loved but neglected national treasure, this is both a challenge and an opportunity.
Rogers said, “Look for champions: the first sponsor or official. Make new friends but keep the old.”
Lower the threshold for people to engage with art
Perhaps the most innovative and inspiring regenerative project of the conference was The White Cube, presented by David Gianotten, managing partner and architect at OMA.
Seeking to help repair the damage done to a plantation community in Lusanga, Democratic Republic of the Congo, artist Renzo Martins and Gianotten moved beyond symbolic gestures of decolonisation and created a sustainable self funding group that is more than the sum of its parts – an art collective, biodiversity restoration, conference centre, sustainable housing creative hub. More projects are planned.
Excitingly, the model will be adapted for a post-industrial community in the Netherlands.
Gianotten is looking to “lower the threshold for people to engage with art”.
But the White Cube also poses a deeper question. “Can museums ever hope to be inclusive when no reparations have yet been paid to the plantation workers who financed – and in some cases continue to finance – the very foundations of these institutions?”
Creating immersive worlds
How can cultural institutions embrace but not be overwhelmed by technology? This was another recurring theme at the NEXT IN Summit 2025.
Several speakers from outside the museum community shed light on how technology can augment, rather than overpower, the visitor experience.
Amy Jenkins-Le Guerroué, strategic alliances director at Ubisoft, kicked off her session by demolishing expectations about gamers. They are not just your kids: “the average age of a gamer is 39”.
Ubisoft works closely with museums and academics on the historical detail of its hugely popular Assassin’s Creed series.
She said that Ubisoft creates, “immersive worlds, not games”. She stressed that authenticity is critical to their success. “In order for our players to play 200+ hours in our immersive worlds [these worlds] need to feel real and make sense” ·
Connecting with your core audience
A constant theme at NEXT IN was that storytelling is much more important than the latest technology, which, of course, ages quickly. However, it was Ryan Wineinger-Schattl, senior creative director at Walt Disney Imagineering, who really delved into where mistakes are made in over-reliance on the latest technology.
A project can really go wrong, he said, “When you forget to connect with the core audience on an emotional level”.
Disney is leading the way in creating technology-enabled visitor experiences. However, Wineinger-Schattl suggested that proceeding with caution was key. With AI, he said, “Who owns this asset? Having an ethical response is very important to us”.
Regarding what Disney is currently working on, he remained tight-lipped.
We do know that Walt Disney Imagineering is “bringing emotional intelligence into the field of robotics” with its innovative and Innovation Award-winning BDX droids.
Wineinger-Schattl said that Disney is also playing with “vehicular model mode” and “climbing the uneasy valley of robotic performers – building characters that can act 18 hours a day.”
But, he said, “leaning back into our theatrical roots is so precious. We need to give people a space to connect on a thing that they care about with the people they care about.”
Winston Fisher is CEO of Area15, a groundbreaking experiential retail and entertainment complex in Las Vegas.
He said the rationale behind creating the site was that, “We felt the future of real estate was content and an emotionally connected space.
“At Area15, we value creativity as the secret sauce. Compromise is where you get terrible mediocrity. The riskiest thing you can do is what everyone else is doing. The least risky thing to do is to stand for something.”
ART MASTERS: A Virtual Reality Experience
Carla Prat, design and experiences director at ACCIONA Living and Culture, introduced delegates to Art Masters, A Virtual Reality Experience. Created in collaboration with the Prado National Museum, the firm has designed and produced the experience.
Carla explained the thinking behind creating Art Masters: “What if we could take articles out of the museum space and transform them into an immersive adventure, export the timeless essence of the museum?”
Delegates had the opportunity to try out the experience onsite, as the NEXT IN Summit 2025 served as the global premiere of Art Masters.
VR has evolved from the initial rush to market, when clunky headsets and fuzzy graphics were the norm. From my perspective, Art Masters was nothing short of extraordinary. Practically, the headwear was comfortable. The experience flowe,d and the five works of art chosen from the Prado worked really well in an immersive world.
The Garden of Earthly Delights was a dreamlike, magical experience, and Goya’s Aquelarre, a powerful and unsettling vision, became, if anything, even more so as demons and witches danced under the moonlight; a vivid insight into the artist’s then mental and physical distress.
Art Masters will next travel to China for exhibitions in Shanghai and Chengdu in June and July 2025.
Transformational storytelling
Renowned American designer and founder of experience design firm Local Projects, Jake Barton, spoke about the power of storytelling and how it can change audiences and create experiences to “catalyse meaningful action and bring attention to the climate crisis.”
American museums were not doing enough, he said, to showcase and promote their own, often admirable, work in tackling climate change. This was allowing activists to “step into a vacuum that museums have left”.
Jake led a team of designers in creating multimedia stories that focused on using visitors’ own stories at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. However, of all the exhibits at the museum, the hi-tech displays, the artefacts, and multi-media panels, the one that people responded to the most, the one they found most impactful, was survivors telling their own stories.
Sustainability communication at NEXT IN
One of the many highlights of the NEXT IN Summit 2025 was a session focused on Terra at Expo City Dubai.
This featured Marjan Faraidooni, chief of education and culture for Expo City Dubai, Mark Rhoads, principal at Grimshaw Architects and Carla Prat.
Terra was originally built as the Sustainability Pavilion for Expo 2020 Dubai. It promotes ecology, sustainable technologies and design through immersive experiences. Expo City Dubai is the 1,083-acre site developed from the grounds of the World Expo. It serves as a model for future urban living.
Marjan began the session by providing delegates with an overview of Terra and Expo City Dubai. She outlined the projects that will serve as a legacy of Dubai’s World Expo and its vision for the future.
“Part of the legacy plan for the hosting of the mega event was to continue it as a city”, she said. “Where nature and humans thrive in cities, we have no choice. We have to ask difficult questions and play a part in the solution. Wonder was our entry point, but it wasn’t the end. We asked difficult questions.”
Carla expanded on Acciona’s role in creating the exhibition spaces in Terra. Mark then informed delegates about the building’s architecture. He highlighted how the design specifically had its long life post-Expo in mind.
With over 6,000 sqm of exhibition space, the plan for the Sustainability Pavilion was always to ensure the building would enjoy a long life after the Expo was over. It would transform into a centre for biodiversity and a science museum, developing its mission of education and exploring sustainable practices.
Looking to the past for the future of museums?
Perhaps the most vivid image and radical thought for the future at the NEXT IN Summit 2025 was from Mariët Westermann, director and CEO of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation.
When talking about young audiences (“We have to go where they are”), she reminded delegates that with regard to art, there is, of course, nothing new under the sun.
Jose Luis de Vicente, curator and cultural researcher, and artistic director DHUB, Disseny Hub Barcelona, had made a similar point earlier. When talking about immersive experiences, saying, “Anyone who thinks that what you’re doing is new has never studied Art History”.
Westermann told the story of Duccio’s famous Maestà. Before being placed in the Cathedral in Sienna in 1311 (where it took the place of an earlier painting), it was paraded, in a triumphal procession, through the streets of the city.
One contemporary eyewitness wrote, “On the day on which it was carried to the Duomo, the shops were locked up and the Bishop ordered a great and devout company of priests and brothers with a solemn procession, accompanied by the Signori of the Nine and all the officials of the Commune..
“..and all the populace and all the most worthy were in order next to the said panel with lights lit in their hands, and then behind were women and children with much devotion; and they accompanied it right to the Duomo making procession around the Campo, as was the custom, sounding all the bells in glory out of devotion for such a noble panel as was this.”
Mariët imagined a Rothko paraded in a procession through the streets of Manhattan.
Jose Luis de Vicente, Curator and Cultural Researcher, Artistic Director DHUB, Disseny Hub BarcelonaAnyone who thinks that what you’re doing is new has never studied Art History.
The next NEXT IN
The NEXT IN Summit 2025 provided a well-curated and seamless experience for delegates. The venue couldn’t be better; the facilities were top-notch, and the programme was superb – extensive, ambitious, and innovative.
If you are in the museum or cultural attractions sector, don’t miss the next NEXT IN
