Lāth Carlson - Executive Director, Museum of the Future (Dubai) - "a peek into tomorrow" New York Times

A beacon of hope in a world facing significant challenges is how Lāth Carlson, Executive Director of the Museum of the Future, describes the museum. He sees it as a critical new approach in museums, that aspires to empower people to make a better future.

As the founding Executive Director, Lāth was responsible for the opening of the museum and now ensures that all aspects of MOTF come together to inspire guests and enable them to learn, explore, and actively participate in building a better future. In its first year, MOTF welcomed over 1 million guests from 160 countries with tickets continuously sold out. This makes the Museum of the Future the most successful new museum ever built.

Throughout his career, Lāth has been at the forefront of technology and museum practice. At the University of New Mexico’s Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, he created exhibitions while completing his degree in Cultural Anthropology. From there, Lāth’s interest in interactive design and engineering led him to becoming a designer and project manager at the Please Touch Children’s Museum in Philadelphia as well as the Franklin Institute Science Museum.

From 2012 to 2015, Lāth held the position of Vice President of Exhibits and Content Development, at The Tech Museum of Innovation in Silicon Valley. In 2015, The Tech was awarded the highest honor an American museum can achieve: a National Medal for Museum and Library Service.

Before his directorship at the Museum of the Future, he was a Founding Executive Director of Living Computers: Museum + Labs in Seattle, Washington, a project initiated by Microsoft Co-Founder Paul G. Allen.

Lāth has served on the board of the National Association for Museum Exhibition (USA) and is a Noyce Leadership Institute Fellow. He also lectured in graduate programs at the University of Washington and the University of the Arts, where he occupied a senior lecturer post.

The Museum of the Future is a place of expansive storytelling, as well as being one of the first future-oriented museums in the world. A flagship project of Dubai Future Foundation, the Museum of the Future, is a visionary cultural institution based on a unique initiative by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.