Right now on the Bowery, a busy Manhattan thoroughfare, two supersized lovers embrace several stories up into the blue spring sky. Strapped against the New Museum\u2019s industrial mesh exterior, the pair are frozen in a state of plasticized affection. Their grinning, almost smooching, heads pressed close and glossy torsos entwined. A massive hand, safe as a catcher\u2019s mitt, encases them both, splaying wide across their waists as though to stop them crashing to the sidewalk.<\/p>\n
The site-specific sculpture is titled Art Lovers, a work by Harlem-born artist Tschabalala Self<\/a>, and marks the architectural \u201ckiss point\u201d between the New Museum\u2019s original building and a new expansion. Today, 21 March, the New Museum publicly debuts its enlarged architectural anatomy after two years of being closed to the public. Designed by Rem Koolhaas<\/a>, the OMA founder, and partner Shohei Shigematsu, the $82m project affixes a jagged, glassy jewel to the original building, effectively doubling the footprint to 119,700 sq ft. At a media preview this week, Shigematsu likened the alignment of the two distinct buildings \u2013 one he called more \u201cvertical and introverted\u201d, the other \u201cmore horizontal and extroverted\u201d \u2013 to the search for a romantic partner. \u201cYou know how difficult it is to find a perfect pair,\u201d he said. \u201cVery difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n The seven story addition introduces three levels of gallery space that plug directly into existing floors. Not only does this create much needed airflow, it allows the museum to remain open during exhibition turnover. Where the buildings meet, the architects inserted a kind of public spine that includes an atrium staircase. Currently installed in the middle of it is a flax-based textile that resembles a hulking animal pelt: the first museum project exhibited in the US by Kl\u00e1ra Hosnedlov\u00e1, a Czech artist. Soon, a sculpture commission by Sarah Lucas<\/a> will open in the museum\u2019s brand new outdoor plaza.<\/p>\n New Museum\u2019s New Humans: Memories of the Future exhibition Photograph: Dario Lasagni\/New Museum<\/p>\n Lisa Phillips is the only director to follow founder Marcia Tucker, who launched the museum in 1977 from a small downtown office. Since taking over in 1999, Phillips has shepherded the institution through every major stage of its growth, moving it from a Soho loft to the Bowery, expanding its global audience, and now finalizing this two-building campus. Phillips departs this spring after 27 years. The reopening features the sprawling exhibition New Humans: Memories of the Future<\/a>, a 732-object survey, spanning art, artifacts and visual culture, and occupying the entire museum. The show features new commissions from Camille Henrot, Wangechi Mutu, Ryan Gander and Alice Wang, among many others. There\u2019s plenty of technological wizardry here, but some of the most impactful works are decisively analog. Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson\u2019s images of human fetuses captured with then innovative endoscopic techniques are mesmerizing, and some of them date back to 1965.<\/p>\n \u201cFew museums take on thematic shows of this magnitude,\u201d Phillips said. \u201cIt takes a keen curatorial vision and a lot of research. I think we\u2019re on the threshold of a seriously new age. I think it\u2019s more dramatic than the Industrial Revolution was, and we\u2019re just at the dawn of it. We\u2019re unprepared. We don\u2019t know what\u2019s coming, but it\u2019s coming and fast.\u201d<\/p>\n Massimiliano Gioni, the artistic director and curator, describes the show as a \u201ccapacious\u201d gathering; it loops back and forth through history, with references to the Renaissance-era myth of the \u201chomunculus\u201d and AI<\/a>. All wall text, he says, has been generated by people, with the exception of a small selection of images compiled and annotated by Google\u2019s Gemini: among them, stills from Blade Runner<\/a>, Ex Machina and The Terminator, and an image of Ai-da<\/a>, the painting robot. \u201cBy selecting its own image,\u201d Gemini writes, a little unnervingly, \u201cthe AI suggests that the \u2018valley\u2019 is no longer a place of repulsion but a residency \u2013 a site where the machine finally gazes back at its creator, no longer a mirror, but a sovereign entity capable of defining beauty on its own terms.\u201d<\/p>\n New Museum\u2019s New Humans: Memories of the Future exhibition Photograph: Dario Lasagni\/New Museum<\/p>\n Two of Anicka Yi\u2019s aerobes \u2013 helium-filled translucent machines inspired by mushrooms and aquatic life \u2013 float languidly through the museum\u2019s fourth floor gallery. (Below them: a variegated, marvelously detailed landscape of \u201cextreme maquettes\u201d by the late Congolese artist Bodys Isek Kingelez.) Occasionally, one aerobe drifts down to earth, where it is promptly refilled by museum attendants. First shown at Tate Modern\u2019s Turbine Hall<\/a>, their New York staging is much more intimate. \u201cYou\u2019re closer to them,\u201d said Yi of her aerobes. \u201cThey\u2019re closer to you, and the relationship between bodies is more palpable.\u201d She continues: \u201cYou can tell just by looking at them how vulnerable they are, even though they\u2019re imposing in size. That\u2019s what draws people in \u2026 We connect with them because of that fragility, not in spite of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Other palpable connections may be accessed on street level, where the museum\u2019s first full-service restaurant is located. Also designed by OMA, and with a second public entrance, the space is operated by Henry Rich of the Oberon Group and helmed by executive chef Julia Sherman, also an artist and cookbook author. The menu, she said, \u201cis a continuation of the way I have always cooked \u2013 an intuitive and giddy response to new ingredients, market produce, and travel \u2026 [It\u2019s] in conversation with art simply by sheer proximity. The hope is that the art and the dining experience are foils for one another: prompts to enliven your senses, to encourage deep questions.\u201d<\/p>\n