[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Illuminations_Refik_Gold_1_0002.jpeg?w=820″]<\/p>\n
\n\tFresh off the opening of Dataland, Refik Anadol\u2018s new AI art museum in Los Angeles, the media artist has partnered with the Smithsonian Institution for a new monumental installation.<\/p>\n
\n\tDubbed Smithsonian Dreams<\/em>, the new project will see Anadol transform the Smithsonian Castle, the headquarters of the Institution on the National Mall, with an immersive performance of light, sound, and visuals on July 17 and July 18 at 9 p.m..<\/p>\n \n\tFor the work, Anadol built a custom AI system that reinterprets 200 years of Smithsonian collections and research, amounting to millions of digitized specimens, manuscripts, photographs, artworks, objects, and scientific records. The data is then turned to a projection on the Castle\u2019s facade through a custom visualization system using a UMAP (Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection) algorithm.<\/p>\n \n\tIf all this is sounding a bit familiar, that\u2019s because Anadol\u2019s most well known work, Unsupervised<\/em>, which was shown in the Museum of Modern Art\u2019s lobby for nearly a year, similarly ingested a museum\u2019s collection and then spit out a transformed visualization through a UMAP algorithm. Curatorial text also framed the project as a machine\u2019s \u201cdreams.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cFor me, data is a form of memory,\u201d Anadol said in a statement announcing the Smithsonian project. \u201cThe Smithsonian preserves one of humanity\u2019s most extraordinary repositories of knowledge, accumulated across generations of discovery and imagination. \u2018Smithsonian Dreams\u2019 asks what might emerge if that vast memory could become dynamic, if the Castle itself could learn from its collections, reflect upon them and dream through them. Using machine intelligence as a creative collaborator, we are transforming the archive into a living experience where history, culture, science and imagination continuously unfold in new ways.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFor those who, like Artnet<\/em>\u2018s Ben Davis, see Anadol\u2019s visualizations as a very expensive lava lamp, it seems unlikely the Smithsonian project will change any minds. But, one suspects, for the general public, \u201cSmithsonian Dreams\u201d will be a big hit. Some three million people visited MoMA to see the work, according to the artist\u2019s studio, averaging about 38 minutes in front of the piece.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/artists\/refik-anadol-ai-smithsonian-castle-washington-dc-1234790733\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Illuminations_Refik_Gold_1_0002.jpeg?w=820″] Fresh off the opening of Dataland, Refik Anadol\u2018s new AI art museum in Los Angeles, the media artist has partnered with the Smithsonian Institution for a new monumental installation. Dubbed Smithsonian Dreams, the new project will see Anadol transform the Smithsonian Castle, the headquarters of the Institution on the National Mall, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2018645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2018645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018645\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2018645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2018645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2018645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}