When the New Museum, New York, reopens on March 21 following a two-year, $82 million rebuilding program that has doubled the contemporary art museum’s exhibition capacity, its first thematic exhibition, “New Humans | Memories of the Future”, will explore artists’ concern with what it means to be human in the face of technological change.

It will also be a reminder that the New Museum, founded in 1977 and closed for refurbishment in spring 2024, is a nimble, experimental home to contemporary art that has long served as an on-ramp for artists of the digital age. The institution has initiated cutting-edge programs, most notably Rhizome, the museum’s digital arm since 2003, and New Inc, its incubator for art, design, and technology, launched in 2014. An entire floor of the new extension, which has been designed by OMA’s Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas, is to be dedicated to New Inc and Rhizome, giving both programs a permanent home at the institution for the first time.

In the same week that the New Museum announced its full artist line up for “New Humans”, arebyte Digital Art Centre, London, hosted the art press to unveil its plans for “REBOOT: Recoding Reality”, a two-year program to reimagine more equitable worlds where humans have agency over technology and care for their environments. Attendees also got to see a solo exhibition by groundbreaking net artist and digital sculptor Auriea Harvey: “(This Room is a Sculpture Called) PROPHECY” (on view through March 1, 2026).

On the same day, another UK space, the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, announced its support for the next generation of digital sculptors with the upcoming “Phantasmagoria: Folkloric Sculpture for the Digital Age” (May 15-August 30, 2026), an inspiring instance of a foundation left by a notable artist of the modern age supporting the future of sculpture in a transdisciplinary art ecosystem.

As Massimiliano Gioni, the Edlis Neeson Artistic Director at the New Museum remarked to Right Click Save this week—reflecting on a remarkable year for new and relaunched art institutions around the globe—all this activity says something for institutions with a radical edge, spaces that act as a bridge between past and present, contemporary and digital: “We seem to be necessary.”

— Danielle King, Head of Community at Right Click Save

I am loving the news that the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, will be showing some of the most creative sculptors working today in “Phantasmagoria: Folkloric Sculpture for the Digital Age” (15 May-30 August, 2026).

The exhibition will examine the conjunction of folklore and contemporary digital culture through the work of emerging artists including Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Nina Davies, Joey Holder, Joe Moss, Most Dismal Swamp, Steph Linn, and Philip Speakman, Isaac Lythgoe, and Rustan Söderling. These artists, only one of them over the age of 40, make work with a rich interconnection of folk traditions, myth, and occult practices, as well as AI, gaming, and social media; expressed in a mix of virtual and tangible sculptures, drawings, and simulations that blend digital and handmade production.

“Phantasmagoria” is a reminder that the Institute, like its parent organisation, the Henry Moore Foundation, supports innovative sculpture projects and public appreciation of the visual arts, while at the same time maintaining Moore’s artistic legacy. Both a multi-hyphenate sculptor and a “public artist” for the newsreel and television age, Moore left a transdisciplinary tradition as a teacher, creator of an atelier model for the late 20th century, and interpreter of the intersection of art and municipal life.

That legacy is accessible at the extraordinary artist’s archive, run by the Foundation at Moore’s home and studio at Perry Green, Hertfordshire. The large bronze-cast sculptures in the garden and surrounding fields are a reminder of the editions model of plaza-scale sculptures that ultimately enabled Moore to fund the Foundation; while the maquette collections in his former studio, and temporary exhibition of sketches, drawings, and textile work, are a reminder of where the timelessly arresting magic of this most intentional of artist’s work is to be found.

— Louis Jebb is Managing Editor at Right Click Save.