Museum as a Start-up

By Leonidas Kalai

Sam Aquillano, the founder of Design Museum Boston is coming in for a special talk this Thursday. Here’s why this is (very) important:

A museum has always been: well, a museum. You show up, get a ticket, walk around in silence for an hour or three and then boom. You’re out. How can you redesign such an old experience? Sam Aquillano had the answer. And the guts.

Design Museum focuses on educating the world about Universal Design. Not a small mission, if we may say so ourselves, but a very admirable to say the least.

It’s a nomadic Museum.

While based in Boston, it doesn’t have a physical space that it calls home. Less like the MFA and more like Red Sox Fans, Design Museum Boston is sort-of everywhere. Being a distributed museum, they hold exhibitions and awesome events all over town. He built Design Museum Boston by turning the museum inside out, turning the entire city into the museum. This entails putting exhibitions and events in places where people already go: retail spaces, public spaces and even the plain old outside.

They believe that design is a process, and a way of thinking.

Sound familiar? We thought so too! This is exactly what we believe in at Scout. Design is not just for designers; it’s everywhere, for everyone, inclusive and accessible. The kind of knowledge they’re looking to spread and conversations to ignite range from architecture to video game design, furniture and even fashion.

This is why we’re absolutely psyched to have Sam Aquillano come in and share with us his founding story, mission, and philosophies on design.

Hope to see you there!