Humans, Machines, and Possible Futures: The Last 100 Years at New Museum

The New Museum has launched "New Humans: Memories of the Future," a massive exhibition spanning its entire building and featuring over 200 international contributors. The show traces a century of artistic, scientific, and social evolution, pairing 20th-century masters like Constantin Brâncuși and Salvador Dalí with contemporary commissions from artists such as Hito Steyerl and Wangechi Mutu. By exploring themes of automated labor, artificial intelligence, and mechanized warfare, the exhibition frames the relationship between humanity and technology as a series of cyclical leaps and reversals rather than linear progress.

This exhibition is significant for its ambitious scale and its attempt to draw a direct symmetry between the technological anxieties of the 1920s and the digital disruptions of the 2020s. By integrating scientific documentation with avant-garde art, the New Museum positions the current AI revolution within a broader historical context of posthumanism and social transformation. The project underscores the enduring role of the artist in visualizing possible futures and navigating the ethical complexities of a world increasingly shaped by machines.