Set to reopen in fall 2025 following a highly anticipated OMA-designed building expansion in collaboration with Cooper Robertson, the New Museum has announced the theme for the exhibition that will inaugurate the new 60,000-square-foot space. Titled “New Humans: Memories of the Future,” the show will bring together more than 150 artists, writers, scientists, architects and filmmakers in an ambitious cross-disciplinary, cross-generational exploration of what it means to be human amid ever-shifting technological changes.
Drawing parallels between the 20th and 21st Centuries, the exhibition examines how creatives and intellectuals across different eras have responded to, processed and, in some cases, even anticipated the seismic technological and sociological shifts that have shaped new notions of humanity and its possible futures. “’New Humans’ is an encyclopedic, interdisciplinary exhibition that continues the museum’s engagement with today’s most pressing issues,” said Massimiliano Gioni, Edlis Neeson Artistic Director of the New Museum, in a statement, adding that “our most terrifying contemporary concerns are, in fact, as old as humanity itself.”
When Observer reached out for further insight into the exhibition, Gioni said that the theme of the show is our future. “The show will question how artists have envisioned the future, often predicting or dealing with shifting technological transformations while investigating how those transformations have ultimately changed our perception and representation of the self. It looks into the shifting definitions of humans in the 20th and 21st Centuries.”
The show draws from Roger Caillois’s concept of Diagonal Science, a method that merges scientific inquiry with Surrealist impulses. Expanding on this idea, “New Humans” follows what Gioni describes as a Diagonal History, a transgenerational and cross-disciplinary approach that juxtaposes artistic, architectural, cinematic and photographic perspectives from the past century, creating a fluid dialogue between historical and contemporary visions.
Embracing a global and transcultural perspective, the exhibition will feature both historical and contemporary works, spanning 20th-century figures such as Francis Bacon, Salvador Dalí, Ibrahim El-Salahi, H.R. Giger, Hannah Höch, Tatsuo Ikeda, Gyula Kosice, El Lissitzky and Eduardo Paolozzi, alongside recent works by artists who have emerged in recent decades, including Anicka Yi, Lucy Beech, Meriem Bennani, Cyprien Gaillard, Pierre Huyghe, Tau Lewis, Daria Martin, Wangechi Mutu, Precious Okoyomon, Berenice Olmedo, Philippe Parreno, Hito Steyerl, Jamian Juliano-Villani and Andro Wekua.
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Notable loans from institutions in the U.S. and outside of it will help bring this ambitious show to life. However, as Gioni emphasizes, it is, first and foremost, the result of a monumental effort by the museum’s entire team. Conceiving such an extensive exhibition while simultaneously preparing for the museum’s grand reopening was no easy feat. The exhibition will be intentionally dense and challenging for visitors—both a gamble and a provocation, as he puts it. “I think we live in a world that is overstimulated with information and images that can deal with vast amounts of information and images. Then, we have a nostalgic idea that a museum is a space of peace and calm. This show is, instead, very dense. We want to see what happens when the experience of looking at art is concentrated, as when we absorb images in our cell phones in our everyday lives.”
“New Humans: Memories of the Future” was inspired in part by the sudden acceleration of conversations around A.I., robotics and digital technologies in the past three years. But one of the show’s starting points was the 1920 science fiction play Rossum’s Universal Robots by Czech writer Karel Čapek, the first work to introduce the concept of the robot. “Now, 100 years later, we see we are dealing with similar fears of machines taking over or hopes that they could make our life better and easier,” Gioni reflects. The exhibition’s transhistorical approach is, in part, a response to the dangerous spread of historical amnesia. “Recently, I was reading this text about a neurologist who found out that people suffering from amnesia also have trouble envisioning the future.”
By drawing parallels with the past, looking at how artists in the 20th Century addressed concerns still relevant today and analyzing which of their imagined futures ultimately came to pass, the exhibition becomes an exercise in forward-thinking. “If you don’t have memories, you cannot imagine your future,” Gioni says. “Artists have imagined the world to come, and they imagined that as humans, we had to change to enter into the future. Looking back and seeing which futures eventually took place, and maybe we have forgotten, is about looking back and forth simultaneously.”
As the New Museum embarks on an expansive new chapter, its inaugural show reaffirms its commitment to exploring how contemporary art reflects and challenges the present. “We were the first New York institution making exhibitions that directly dealt with the pressing issues of our time,” Gioni says. “We have always been at the forefront of artistic trends and cultural issues. This show continues with this idea of exhibition as a tool to understand the world outside the museum.”
In the coming months, the New Museum is expected to reveal more details about its inaugural exhibition and announce its full 2026 schedule, which will include the first New York museum solo presentation of works by Arthur Jafa and the next edition of the New Museum Triennial.
An enhanced building for a “future-facing” museum
The New Museum in New York City has been temporarily closed since March of last year to complete its long-awaited expansion—a project that will double the museum’s exhibition space and introduce new facilities, including artist studios and a dedicated home for NEW INC, the institution’s incubator for art, design and technology.
The expansion will complement the museum’s original SANAA-designed flagship on the Bowery. More than just an extension, the new building is designed to enhance the visitor experience. It will add three new elevators to improve vertical circulation between floors—an upgrade from the previous system, which required long waits for two large ones with single-floor access. The expansion will also create a new atrium, allowing the museum to host large-scale installations for the first time.
The expansion also brings new opportunities for visitors to enjoy breathtaking panoramic views of Manhattan, particularly in the city’s warmer months. The museum’s iconic seventh-floor Sky Room will double in size, while three newly added upper-floor terraces will offer sweeping perspectives of the Bowery.
Lobby improvements include an expanded bookstore and a full-service restaurant, while outside, a new entrance plaza will provide an open-air space for public art installations and community gatherings. To mark the reopening, the museum will inaugurate the plaza with a new commission, VENUS VICTORIA, by celebrated British artist Sarah Lucas, the first recipient of the Hostetler/Wrigley Sculpture Award. This newly established biannual juried prize will support the production and presentation of new work by women artists on the museum’s public entrance plaza, with additional commissions planned for the façade and the atrium staircase.
“With the new building, we will put more energy into new production programs,” Gioni says. “As a noncollecting institution, we can put a lot of our energy into truly supporting artists by working with them, producing works and finding the resources to make it possible.”
The new OMA-designed building will be named in honor of the late visionary philanthropist Toby Devan Lewis, a longtime New Museum trustee whose $30 million donation to the museum’s Capital Campaign represents the largest and most significant gift in its history. To date, the New Museum has raised $118 million toward its $125 million campaign goal, with construction costs totaling $82 million.
It’s a big year for museum expansions in New York City
We’re entering a year marked by major museum expansions and re-openings across New York City. Leading the wave of institutional transformations is the Frick Collection, which will unveil its newly renovated Fifth Avenue home on April 17 after a multi-year restoration aimed at returning it to its Gilded Age grandeur. Designed by Selldorf Architects with executive architect Beyer Blinder Belle, the project sought to cast new light on the Frick’s historical legacy while addressing critical infrastructure and operational needs. The renovation revitalizes both the Beaux-Arts architecture and the museum’s interiors, which have been masterfully restored. For the first time, visitors will have access to the Frick’s second floor, where ten newly created galleries—converted from former offices and staff spaces—will showcase rarely exhibited and recently acquired works.
Meanwhile, after a six-year closure, the Studio Museum in Harlem is finally set to reopen in its long-awaited new home at 144 West 125th Street. Designed by architect David Adjaye, the 82,000-square-foot building will provide expanded exhibition spaces, dedicated areas for educational initiatives and enhanced facilities for the museum’s renowned Artist-in-Residence program.
The new five-story building is designed to embody the museum’s core values of openness and engagement. Street-facing exhibition spaces will offer passersby a glimpse inside the Studio Museum in Harlem, while an “inverted stoop”—a distinctive set of steps leading down to the building’s lower level—will serve as an accessible space for community gatherings, screenings and performances. The museum will reopen with a retrospective honoring Tom Lloyd, the influential American sculptor, educator and activist whose pioneering work was included in the museum’s inaugural exhibition in 1968.
