For the 2021 Exhibit Columbus Exhibition, cocurators Iker Gil and Mimi Zeiger invited exhibition participants to create site-specific, future-oriented installations in response to the theme: New Middles: From Main Street to Megalopolis, What is the Future of the Middle City? This 2020–21 cycle of programming explores the future of the center of the United States and the regions connected by the Mississippi watershed. The 2021 exhibition uses Columbus as a context to explore this question by displaying 16 temporary installations throughout downtown.

Iker Gil is a Chicago-based architect, editor, and curator. He is the director of MAS Studio, a collaborative architecture and design firm as well as the founder and editor-in-chief of the design journal MAS Context. He teaches architecture studios at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and, since 2019, he is the executive director of the SOM Foundation. Gil has collaborated with architects, artists, and designers on projects including Geometry of Light at the Barcelona Pavilion and Farnsworth House, Inside Marina City, and the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin signage standards. Gil was the Associate Curator of the US Pavilion at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale. He has curated exhibitions at the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the Graham Foundation, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Mimi Zeiger is a Los Angeles-based critic, editor, and curator. She was cocurator of the US Pavilion for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Curatorial projects include Soft Schindler at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture and Now, There: Scenes from the Post-Geographic City, which received the Bronze Dragon award at the 2015 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, Shenzhen. Zeiger has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Architectural Review, Metropolis, and Architect. She is an opinion columnist for Dezeen and former West Coast editor of The Architects Newspaper. Zeiger is the 2015 recipient of the Bradford Williams Medal for excellence in writing about landscape architecture. She is faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and in the Media Design Practic

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