The New Museum in New York City reopens in 2026 with a bold new vision, unveiling expanded spaces, enhanced amenities, and a landmark exhibition that probes what it means to be human in an age of rapid technological change. The reopening positions the Museum as a vibrant “creative campus,” bringing together contemporary art, innovation, and public programming in the heart of the city. The new building, connecting to the existing SANAA structure, offers3 floors of new exhibitions, a cafe, and a new gallery, launching with the exhibition New Humans: Memories of the Future.

Image Credits: Hito Steyerl, Mechanical Kurds (2025), Courtesy of the artist. New Museum.

The ambitious opening exhibition explores artists’ enduring fascination with what it means to be human amid rapid technological change. Spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the show features over 150 international creators, including Sophia Al-Maria, Meriem Bennani, Pierre Huyghe, Wangechi Mutu, Hito Steyerl, and Anicka Yi, alongside seminal figures such as Francis Bacon, Salvador Dalí, El Lissitzky, and Hannah Höch, tracing moments when social and technological shifts inspired new visions of humanity. From robots and cyborgs to uncanny, otherworldly life forms, New Humans combines art with utopian architects, sci-fi filmmakers, and visionary writers to imagine physical, virtual, and post-human futures. Curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Gary Carrion-Murayari, Vivian Crockett, and Madeline Weisburg, the exhibition presents art as a collective act of creative foresight, a reflection on the humans we may yet become.

Image Credits: Daria Martin, Soft Materials still (2004), Courtesy of The Artist. New Museum

Daria Martin’s Soft Materials (2004) will be featured in New Humans at the New Museum, presenting a haunting and intimate exploration of the interplay between humans and machines. Filmed in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Zurich, the work depicts a man and a woman mirroring the movements of machines in a delicate, sometimes unsettling choreography, blurring the line between human and mechanical agency. Vulnerable and exposed—humans unclothed, machines stripped of protective covering—the film evokes modernist visions of a mechanized utopia, drawing on influences from 1960s and 70s American body performance and Robert Morris’s Neoclassic, to probe the evolving relationship between flesh, movement, and technology.

Image Credits: Exterior View 2025, Courtesy of New Museum

The New Museum’s expansion transforms it into a dynamic “creative campus” for contemporary art, featuring brighter, redesigned galleries, a new restaurant run by the Oberon Group, and a dedicated home for the NEW INC cultural incubator. Visitors can experience these upgrades firsthand during the opening weekend, with free admission offered on March 21 and 22, 2026.