PHOTOS: The FUTURES exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Arts + Industries Building

A young visitor checks out a light display in the center of the FUTURES exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Arts + Industries Building. (WTOP / Sandy Kozel)

The Smithsonian’s Arts + Industries Building, which opened on the National Mall in 1881, is the home of the FUTURES exhibit, on view until July 6, 2022. The exhibit features works from many museums under the Smithsonian umbrella. (WTOP / Sandy Kozel)

Visitors cross into the Arts + Industries Building through an iridescent installation by Soo Sunny Park at the mall entrance. It reflects light differently depending on weather, time of day and the spot from which it is viewed. (WTOP / Sandy Kozel)

The prototype of Virgin’s Hyperloop Pegasus pod, which one day hopes to transport cargo and people up to 670 mph through an airless vacuum tube, is part of the FUTURES exhibition. (WTOP / Sandy Kozel)

FUTURES is displaying the Bell Nexus Air Taxi, which is based on cutting-edge technology known as eVTOL, or electrical vertical takeoff and landing, and can seat 5 people. Jetson’s flying car, anyone? (WTOP / Sandy Kozel)

A scale model of Oceania City, a concept capable of supporting 10,000 residents, is featured in the Smithsonian’s FUTURES exhibit. (WTOP / Sandy Kozel)

This visitor’s arm movements answers the computer’s questions about the future. (WTOP / Sandy Kozel)

Project Loon from X, the Moonshot factory, created a network of balloons to provide internet from high in the sky. But the FUTURES exhibit notes that the 2020 undertaking folded a year later. (WTOP / Sandy Kozel)

The FUTURES exhibit also spotlights inventions of the past, including instructions for space travel. This is a reproduction of an Apollo Navigation Guide Printout, which contained NASA computer source code. (WTOP / Sandy Kozel)

One of the halls of the FUTURES exhibition at the Smithsonian’s Arts + Industries Building. The public is invited to a “FUTURES Forward Closing Party” on Wed., July 6 — all day until 11 p.m. There will be hands-on family activities, dance parties and a robot ballet performance. (WTOP / Sandy Kozel)