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We are excited to celebrate the recent acquisitions of Chromie Squiggles and CryptoPunks into @MuseumModernArt's permanent collection.
We are all profoundly grateful to the artists and collectors who supported this important donation, uniting the collective generosity of this amazing community. MoMA has been championing transformative art of the modern era for nearly a century and remains at the vanguard as we peer into the digital frontier.
Thank you to @ArtOnBlockchain, @CozomoMedici, @gmoneyNFT, @jdh, @judithESSS, @kukulabanze, @larvalabs, @NTmoney, @Rhyd0n, @squiggleDAO, and @VonMises14 for your profound generosity, as well as to MoMA’s Stuart Comer & Michelle Kuo for their extraordinary support and curatorial vision.
Refik Anadol: "There is also a professional tension embedded in this – I genuinely believe I am only ever as good as my next project. It is a demanding inner algorithm that ensures each new endeavor is more challenging than the last."
From Beyond the Algorithm: Refik Anadol on AI, Art, and the Future of Museums for HYPE&HYPER Magazine, August 13, 2025.
They said photography wasn’t art.
They said cinema wasn’t art.
They said video games weren’t art.
Now they say AI arts/digital art isn’t art.
I’ve spent over a decade with my studio team turning millions of data points into living, breathing artwork experiences ethically — at MoMA, at the Guggenheim, at the Venice Biennale. Not because a machine told me what to create, but because I had a vision that no traditional tool could realize.
Denying all AI technologies as an artistic medium doesn’t protect art. It limits it. The artists who embrace new tools don’t replace the old masters — they join them.
Art is not defined by the brush. It’s defined by the intention, the emotion, and the courage to see the world differently.
Glenn Lowry: "[Anadol] wrote some algorithms that allowed the data from one object to evolve into the data of another object to become yet a third object or a fourth object never before seen... people found it deeply satisfying."
Former Director of MoMA, for 60 Minutes.
When you think about the way art is created, you might imagine painters, photographers, or sculptors immersed in their work at their studios. But what about a person sitting in front of a computer screen using artificial intelligence and data to create visuals. Is that art? cbsn.ws/46OFUB2
In 2024, in an attempt to understand the cognitive and emotional resonance of @refikanadol's UNSUPERVISED, scientists equipped visitors to MoMA with EEG headsets, capturing the precise neurobiological signature of an aesthetic encounter.
Aesthetic encounters refer to intense, self-reported states of deep attention, focus, and a temporary loss of self-awareness experienced by visitors while engaging with the artwork. These are moments where individuals become fully immersed in the artistic experience.
How did visitors react to a work of AI art at New York’s Museum of Modern Art? “It was an utterly extraordinary hit,” says Glenn Lowry, who was MoMA's director at the time of the exhibit. cbsn.ws/4qU9PPF
They found that the aesthetic power of UNSUPERVISED translated directly into a measurable neurobiological signature, with elevated anterior gamma power mirroring the viewer’s profound sense of awe and immersion.
The recorded frequencies showed that true aesthetic engagement provoked high-frequency gamma activity in the anterior brain, signifying an intense state of unified perception. Paired with changes in Frontal Alpha Asymmetry, they were able to isolate the exact biological marker where visual complexity converts into profound pleasure.
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Glenn Lowry: "One has to recognize that works of art that challenge you are always going to be misunderstood by many at first."
Former Director of MoMA speaking on @refikanadol’s UNSUPERVISED (Nov 19, 2022–Oct 29, 2023) for 60 Minutes.
Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Jerry Saltz says most AI art still falls short, calling 90% of it “crap.”
But then again, “90% of the art made during the Renaissance was also crap," Saltz says. "Things take time.” cbsn.ws/46kxbGy
Clip from 60 Minutes showcasing our exhibition with @refikanadol at Guggenheim Bilbao, Living Architecture: Ghery, inaugurating the museum's in situ series.
In the 188 days on view, it attracted nearly 900k visitors, becoming the most visited exhibition in the museum's history.
Every image in this studio was created by artist Refik Anadol using artificial intelligence. cbsn.ws/3ZQqcBI
in situ: Refik Anadol exemplified @refikanadol's vision for site-specific, AI-driven installations — wherein data becomes material and space becomes a living canvas shaped by memory, form, and imagination.
Through the lens of advanced artificial intelligence, the works of legendary architect Frank Gehry are not just displayed but dynamically reimagined, offering a new way to experience and interact with the architects iconic forms.
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60 Minutes: "Refik Anadol told us since 2020, he's only worked with what he calls ethically sourced datasets."
Below: @refikanadol explaining the ethically sourced dataset behind the Large Nature Model.
Artist Molly Crabapple says AI art generators are scraping art from the web without artists’ consent. She calls it “the greatest art heist in history.” cbsn.ws/476QfIC
The dataset that the Large Nature Model (LNM) is built on exists in defiance of the larger ethical concerns that dominate the discourse around AI art.
Every single one of the nearly billion data points in the LNM’s dataset was sourced directly from the studio or one of its institutional partners, many with scientific nomenclature included.
Cozomo de’ Medici: "…what makes this acquisition special is a large group of collectors (most names you might recognize) came together to gift Punks & Squiggles from their personal collections. It was a team effort. And one that reflects the spirit of this movement."
Quote from Medici Minutes - Issue #176, December 20, 2025.
GM to the @CozomoMedici for the Medici Minutes every week. It's my favourite newsletter covering the intersection of culture, digital art, crypto, & AI. Super grateful for the kind words about @MuseumModernArt along with his (and others) generous donation of Punks & Squiggles.
Cozomo de' Medici: "It’s not about any one person, punk or squiggle. It’s about our communal effort to forge this movement."
Subscribe to Medici Minutes: mediciminutes.com/
Quote from Medici Minutes - Issue #176 by @CozomoMedici, December 20, 2025.
Chief Biraci Nixiwaka Yawanawa: "For us, the forest is not a resource, it is a living being that we are a part of… What we’ve created together is not only a collaboration; it is a bridge between knowledge systems, between technology and spirit, between the forest and the cities of the world."
Below: Clip from Winds of Yawanawa - AI Data Painting - 1/1 by @refikanadol, 2023 | 1OF1 Collection.
Urs Fischer: "...I don’t care about big or small. I’m interested in collisions of things, and how objects relate to each other."
Clip from CHAOS #502 by Urs Fischer, 2024 | 1OF1 Collection. Quote is from The Imperfectionist by Calvin Tomkins for The New Yorker, October 12, 2009.
Urs Fischer’s CHAOS series comprises 501 original digital sculptures created using 3D modeling and 3D scanning.
The resulting collisions between the objects yield unexpected new forms, reflecting the artist’s explorations of perspective, perception, and materiality, as well as his intense interest in interactions among seemingly disparate, incongruous elements.
Quote is from The Imperfectionist by Calvin Tomkins for The New Yorker, October 12, 2009.
Below: CHAOS #197 by Urs Fischer, 2024, shown in Urs Fischer: CHAOS #1–#500 at Gagosian/Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles (August 20 - October 29, 2022).
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Beeple: "I reject the idea that technology and nature are in a zero-sum game where one has to be hurt for the other to thrive... My work aims to explore that balance and the idea that these two forces can coexist."
Below: Human One by @beeple, 2021 - present, shown in exhibition at Deji Art Museum (Sept 15th, 2024 - Jan 15th, 2025).
Quote is from From Charleston to China: Inside Beeple’s First Solo Exhibition at Deji Art Museum by @mattmedved for @nftnow, Jan. 8, 2025.
xitter.twitterapi.xyz/nowmedia/status/187704…
From Charleston to China 🇨🇳
We caught up with @beeple at the opening of his first-ever solo exhibition at Deji Art Museum
Full interview ↓
Artworks pictured above:
▫️HUMAN ONE by @beeple, 2021 - Present
▫️BIOME LUMINA #52/1000 by @refikanadol, 2025
Below: A HUMAN IS BORN by @beeple, 2021/22
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The Museum of Modern Art's Evolving Collection of On-Chain Art
Alfred Barr: "The Permanent Collection may be pictured as a torpedo in motion: The blunt end pushes into the advanced field of art..." (MoMA Founder, 1933)
Including the works of @refikanadol, @larvalabs, @ArtOnBlockchain, @eyecheng, and @newrafael.
Unsupervised — Machine Hallucinations — MoMA 1/1 by Refik Anadol (@refikanadol), 2022
Acquired on Oct. 10, 2023 through the generosity of @1OF1_art (@kukulabanze) + RFC Collection (Desiree Casoni & @pablorfraile).
"In Unsupervised — Machine Hallucinations — MoMA, Anadol has created a singular and unprecedented meditation on technology, creativity, and modern art, that continuously generates new forms on a large scale media wall. The work responds to inputs from the environment and is tokenized on the blockchain."
Quote from the acquisition's press release.
Sasha Stiles for MoMA: "...it’s also important not to compartmentalize technology and AI, but to recognize it as a cultural force that is reshaping so many of the fundamental aspects of how we create and express and connect with each other."
Full Article: moma.org/magazine/articles/1…
The great @sashastiles taking over the iconic Gund Gallery at @MuseumModernArt with her LIVING POEM. moma.org/magazine/articles/1…
Sunny Cheung, M+ Museum Curator: "In Beeple’s work, this pristine traveller remains the constant — a kind of blank slate on which viewers can project their own ideas or perhaps their own self-images."
Below: Beeple: HUMAN ONE at M+ Museum of Contemporary Visual Culture, Hong Kong (Dec 9, 2022 - June 11, 2023).
Quote from An Infinite Journey in the Virtual Realm: On Beeple and 'HUMAN ONE' by Sunny Cheung for M+ Magazine, Feb. 17, 2023.
Full article: mplus.org.hk/en/magazine/cri…
"Beeple is indisputably one of the most prominent and globally recognised figures in the twenty-first century’s technology-driven visual culture…"
— Doryun Chong, Deputy Director, Curatorial and Chief Curator, M+
Below: Beeple: HUMAN ONE, M+ Museum of Contemporary Visual Culture, Hong Kong (Dec 9, 2022 - June 11, 2023).
Good Morning Art Basel Miami 🌴
Winds of Yawanawa by @refikanadol | ICA Museum Sculpture Garden.
