Museum of the Future Launches Exclusive Summer Activations
As part of the museum's special summer activations and for the first time, visitors will be able to enter the museum at any time during operating hours, with Summer Pass holders receiving exclusive access to seasonal events and behind-the-scenes experiences. The initiative reflects the museum's ongoing commitment to education, wellness, creativity, and innovation.
Meet an Astronaut
Headline activations include 'Meet an Astronaut', scheduled for both 14 July and 21 july, where guests will have the opportunity to interact with members of the UAE Space Programme including real-life astronauts from Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC). Visitors will gain insight into the country's evolving space ambitions during the two space-themed days.
Capture the Future
As part of the summer activations, the museum will also introduce 'Capture the Future,' a guided photography tour starting 14 July, led by in-house experts. Participants will learn creative approaches to visual storytelling through the museum's very own lens, with early-morning sessions offering exclusive access to the museum's most photogenic spaces.
Wellness Weekends
On weekends from 19 July to 29 August, 'Wellness Weekends' will take place at Al Waha, where yoga and meditation sessions will be offered. These sessions will be delivered in collaboration with renowned yoga instructors providing a reflective and rejuvenating start to the day.
Light the Future
Further experiences include 'Light the Future', a one-of-a-kind interactive activation where a handful of guests will have the chance to illuminate the museum's iconic façade. This moment allows participants to quite literally switch on the Museum of the Future lights, allowing visitors to leave their mark and become part of the museum's story in a truly unforgettable way.
Behind-the-Scenes Tours
During the summer months, visitors can now also book a behind-the-scenes tour where they are offered a rare glimpse into the operational, architectural systems that support the building. For the first time ever, guest will get access to back-of-house places that were not accessible to the public before.
Additional Activities
A rotating schedule of additional activations will be confirmed over the coming weeks, including poetry and book readings as well as test drive experiences with Audi's newest cars.
Updates will be shared via the museum's official social media channels and website: https://museumofthefuture.ae/en/offer/general-offers.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The National
2 hours ago
- The National
Timeframe: From 2016 to 2023, Travis Scott's Abu Dhabi legacy ahead of his return
With more than $210 million in revenue across 78 shows, Travis Scott's Circus Maximus World Tour – set to hit Abu Dhabi on November 15 – is officially the highest-grossing solo rap tour of all time. But back in 2016, when the rapper first touched down in the UAE capital, he was a rising star. While he had a cult following even then, Scott was far from the global force he is today. Part of the line-up at the free Beats on the Beach concert series on the Corniche, on the sidelines of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Scott was a headliner on the third night, performing on the same stage as Lebanese powerhouse Nancy Ajram. Scott's performance came less than two months after the release of his second studio album, Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight, which debuted at No 1 on the US Billboard 200 chart. 'Scott took to the Corniche stage like a rocket and in the space of a mere 15 minutes had the crowd sweating and shouting along to his Mad Hatter-esque raps and shuddering dystopian beats,' The National wrote of the 2016 show. For some fans, however, the intensity proved too much. The then-24-year-old paused his performance midway to allow an exhausted audience member to be escorted from the front. After ensuring the fan was OK, he warned the crowd that he wasn't finished: 'This is a Travis Scott show. If you can't handle that, you better leave because we all came here to party, right?' he said. Hours after his show, too, Scott wasn't done, turning up at Mad nightclub at Yas Island for another performance 'bounding around and whipping the late-night onlookers into a frenzy'. Scott was due to return to Abu Dhabi three years later, as one of the headline acts at the 2019 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix after-race concert series, but suddenly pulled out three days before the show due to 'unforeseen circumstances', leaving many fans disappointed. 'While we are not contractually able to discuss the reason why, Travis couldn't do it because something happened that was totally out of his control,' John Lickrish, chief executive of organiser Flash Entertainment, told The National. 'Now we as a team are disappointed that this can happen so close to the show, but what I can say is that it was for extremely legitimate reasons and I feel empathy for him.' Rappers Future and Gucci Mane stepped in for Scott on the night. Scott returned to Abu Dhabi in 2023 for a blowout set, as the headliner of the inaugural Wireless Festival Middle East at Etihad Park, where he will also perform in November. The UK-import festival featured British rapper MIA, American rapper Lil Uzi Vert, Egyptian star Wegz and Iraqi rapper Ali Gatie performing across multiple stages. But Scott was the main draw of the event and he delivered an explosive show, blending surreal stage settings with his raucous onstage temperament. Scott was at the top of his game, The National reported, arriving on stage amid a cacophony of bass, strobes and smoke, opening with Hold That Heat and Highest in the Room, as he thundered around the stage as loyal fans mirrored him below. There were plenty of flames, smoke and exhilarating visuals with every song such as the genre-bending Stargazing, from 2018's Astroworld, performed in front of a kaleidoscopic wall of digital art.


The National
2 hours ago
- The National
At Kashtat Amina, Mariam Almansoori serves up Emirati home cooking inspired by childhood memories
It begins with a kettle. Not the tall, sleek kind that whistles in designer kitchens, but the round, sturdy bronze squat vessel with a thickened base found in many Emirati homes 'It's the same one we used in our house in Abu Dhabi,' says chef Mariam Almansoori. 'Every day we used to boil the water and pour it into this big kettle with black tea with cardamom, cloves, sugar. The smell would fill the whole house.' The kettle is now just inside the entrance of Kashtat Amina, Almansoori's newly opened restaurant in Sharjah's Aljada district, with its suburban walkways and lush greenery. There's no sign beside it. No curated description. Just the quiet suggestion that memory lives in objects as much as it does in taste. For Almansoori, the decision to launch her first Emirati standalone restaurant – its name translates to 'Amina's picnic' after her mother – is more than a professional step. It's a homecoming. 'I had a lot of chances to open a restaurant before,' she says. 'But I always waited. I wanted it to be at the right time, in the right place, with the right meaning.' That meaning comes through strongest in the food, which draws directly from Almansoori's childhood meals. Dishes such as keema hamsa (minced meat sauteed with tomatoes and onions), grilled jeder (lamb shank with tamarind sauce, basmati rice and nuts) and thareed (bread soaked in meat broth with vegetables) appear on the menu not as nostalgic flourishes, but as cultural inheritances. 'It's not only about the food,' she says. 'Lots of people come and say: 'Chef, can we take this home with us?' It's just a flower on the table, or a cushion, nothing big. But to me, it's full of love. It's my mother's hand in it. I still feel her, even when I'm serving strangers.' Raised in Ras Al Khaimah, Almansoori grew up in a home with two kitchens – one run by her mother, the other often commandeered by her father – each guided by a distinct culinary philosophy that she learnt to absorb early on. 'If I ask mama how long to cook something, she never says minutes,' Almansoori says. 'She says: 'When the smell starts to change' or: 'When the rice starts to dance.' That's the kind of knowledge that stays with you.' Her father, also a skilled cook, brought a flair for presentation. 'He was all about hospitality,' she adds. 'He loved to garnish, while my mother didn't. They were always arguing about that.' Kashtat Amina carries both impulses – the quiet intimacy of home cooking and the polish of a well-run kitchen – in its expert take on rustic Emirati staples. The restaurant, bright and lined with woven baskets, with furniture and staff in indigo, is both modern and homely – and is full of local markers, from the kettle and old transistor radio to shelves of clay jars. A painting of Almansoori's mother Amina hangs proudly in the centre of the kitchen, her eyes warm in invitation. One dish that carries particular weight is the chicken maragooga, a stewed chicken with vegetables and thin bread layers. 'This was always loved by the family and guests,' she says. 'The pot would come straight from the stove to the table and we would eat it immediately.' That inherent sense of hospitality, so central to Emirati cuisine, is something she learnt from her mother. 'My mother used to make it when people came after the dhuhr prayer. It wasn't just food. It was the way she opened the house, welcomed people, showed care.' Almansoori's other ventures – including the popular Montauk in Abu Dhabi's Yas Island, where Sri Lankan rice might be topped with slow-roasted ribs and cinnamon coconut cream served alongside Emirati majboos and an apple Danish – have long embraced reinterpretation. But this time, she wanted to move in the opposite direction. 'I wanted to stop mixing. No fusion,' she says. 'I wanted to go back. Bring things to their original taste. To say: this is what we had in our houses. This is how it was done.' That backward glance, however, isn't about retreat. She speaks frequently about Emirati food as something underrepresented, not just internationally, but at home. 'If you go outside the UAE, you see restaurants from everywhere. You see Turkish, Lebanese, Japanese, but not Emirati. Even here in Sharjah or Dubai, how many restaurants are really doing Emirati cuisine? I don't mean owned by Emiratis. I mean the food.' And she's intent on giving those local flavours a global platform, with Almansoori hoping Kashtat Amina will be recognised if the Michelin Guide extends its UAE presence to Sharjah. 'We want to be ready, because there is a guideline that Michelin follows – from using organic produce to changing the menu regularly,' she says. 'We try to update parts of the menu every three months, not just to change, but to keep enhancing and evolving. There's a lot we still need to do, but I think we're more than capable – because we're doing it for the right reasons.' That desire to teach without diluting also informs her next venture: a culinary training academy for Emiratis as well as residents. 'I want to create a space where we train them from zero,' she says. 'Not just how to cook, but how to work in a kitchen, how to run a restaurant. 'I already have six or seven with me now. Some of them were not confident at first, but now they are leading the service. They are managing the guests. I'm so proud.' When asked what makes a dish truly Emirati, she doesn't hesitate. 'It's not the ingredients or technique. It's when you know what each one means and why we why we use turmeric, when we add ghee, how much to stir the rice. It's not rules. It's memory.' By the end of the visit, our own kettle of tea has gone cold. A young staff member moves to take it away, but she stops him. 'Leave it,' she says quietly. 'I just want to savour this moment a little more.'


The National
2 hours ago
- The National
From Syria to Mayfair via Berlin: Marwan gets the blockbuster treatment with Christie's exhibition
Berlin is famous for its walls and for decades a select group of people have treasured lumps of its former Cold War dividing line. There is something appropriate about a chunk of wall from the Berlin studio of Marwan Kassab-Bachi sitting at the heart of a blockbuster exhibition of his work at Christie's in central London. The mountain is his soul staying in the landscape and in the soil of Syria Ridha Moumni, Christie's Middle East The Mayfair institution has been taken over by a display of Marwan's work that does full justice to his long career, which was almost entirely shaped by his life in Berlin. It was his roots in Syria that helped to shape his work. A practitioner of art as an enigmatic expression of the soul, Marwan is seen by Christie's curator Ridha Moumni as working out a deep attachment to his Syrian childhood in his paintings. Not least in the breakthrough period of his work when Maran painted many heads reclining but with an identifiable landscape on the canvas. You can take the boy out of the foothills of Mount Qasioun but for the painter it was a lifelong resource. The exhibition sets this up with a series of almost monochrome postwar Berlin photographs by the famed Henri Cartier-Bresson. The chairman of Christie's Middle East and Africa has chose Marwan: A Soul in Exile as the third Christies summer series on art of the Arab World. Works like the Parisian Head in 1973 or Kopf moved the focus to the head with rich, deep French-inspired use of colour to show how he brooded on his past, almost like a man lost in thought staring into a mirror. The mountain is never depicted but its brows and ridges are reflected in the flesh. "The head is mixing directly with the landscape," says Mr Moumni at one point of a tour on the opening morning of the month-long retrospective. "He acknowledged that the faces and the heads that he's painting all his life are part of the mountain. The mountain is the core of his painting - the–mountain is his soul staying in the landscape and in the soil of Syria." From the 1967 war through to the outset of the 1970s, Marwan's work took on a political dimension with piece such as The Disappeared, where handkerchiefs and scarves covered the faces. There was also the haunting Three Palestinian Boys in 1970. "When the veil comes over the face it is almost a feeling of the disappearance but also a feeling of covering the face in front of the atrocities of the world," said Mr Moumni. "This is a very, very strong and impactful painting from 1970. "The Three Palestinian Boys is a painting that was displayed very extensively through his life and it is not only a work on that did not only on the displacement but what he wanted to do was a representation of the Palestinian voice. This is why he represented them from below." The dramatic perspective flips Marwan's usual order with big bodies and small hands and, crucially, heads. Typically the head or the face dominated his work but not in this case. Meanwhile, as the decade progressed he would go on to develop portraits of political figures such as the Syrian Munif Al Razzaz or the Iraqi Badr Shakir Al Sayyab. Intimate artist Marwan eventually resumed his direct relationship with Syria. He was not banned from his home country, although he had suffered the schism of his family land being seized not long after he started studying in Berlin in 1957. A trove of his correspondence in Arabic forms a side exhibit and is as illuminating as the body of paintings. "Marwan was very poetic in the way he was writing -he was really writing almost like a poet," he added. "He was writing these letters in Arabic to people and showing that reading and writing in Arabic and using Arabic letters and its literature was very important for him." Homeward bound In the 1990s what had been an intermittent relationship with the Middle East and his work – he exhibited at the Arab Cultural Centre in Damascus in 1970 – came to be a part of his career. A portrait of Mona Atassi, the driving force behind the Attasi Foundation, by Marwan is part of the exhibition for that reason. As director of the summer academy at Darat Al Funun in Amman, he became a mentor to a generation of Arab artists. In the decade before his death in 2016, Mr Marwan honed in on the face and in these paintings what surrounds the faces are telling, according to Mr Moumni. In this as elsewhere in his work there are hallmarks of a Cezanne influence. "What you see around [the face] is the question of the soil but also the question of the death," he explains of one work. "The hair is creating almost a continuity with the landscape and here it's almost a wall, almost a darkness created by the idea of the afterlife."