"The pitch for 'New Humans' was that it would confront us with 'what it means to be human in the face of sweeping technological changes.' That might suggest a zeitgeist-chasing show of art trying to capture tech anxiety about the topics of the day: chatbots and brainrot, AR glasses and Polymarket. There are the barest traces of that sort of subject matter here, and it feels as if the show has hit them with a petrification ray."
"The show proves to be about 'visions of the future' in a sense so broad that most art involving imagining things could be here. There's a gallery about architecture; there's a gallery about becoming an animal. There's an awful lot of surreal-ish contemporary painting, which feels like it's just there."
"And then to a startling degree, 'New Humans' is about Modernism. The 'new humans' are actually the old humans, and ever-present here is the 20th-century 'tradition of the new' in art, of artists trained in"
The 'New Humans: Memories of the Future' exhibition at the newly expanded New Museum presents a sprawling exploration of what it means to be human amid technological change. Rather than directly addressing contemporary tech anxieties like AI and social media, the show takes a broader approach to visions of the future. It includes galleries on architecture, animal transformation, and surrealist painting. Notably, the exhibition reveals itself to be fundamentally about Modernism and the 20th-century 'tradition of the new' in art. While featuring highlights and some weaker moments, the show suggests the contemporary art project itself may be reaching its conclusion, with the 'new humans' ultimately representing old artistic traditions.
Read at Artnet News
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