Things to Come: Time, Technology, and the Future

Typically designed to make life more efficient and productive, technological advancements are often associated with progress. Though concerns about the unintended consequences of technology stretch back to antiquity, humankind continues to look further ahead. Each technological revolution, first met with optimism, gives way to apprehension, and soon the cycle renews. This exhibition takes up this relentless forward march, exploring the ways American artists have envisioned the future—from imagining a new existence to escaping the current moment. Whether as idealized utopias or post-apocalyptic dystopias, the future as glimpsed in these works can take the form of compelling alternatives as well as warnings for things to come.

Drawing its title from H. G. Wells’s 1936 novel The Shape of Things to Come, the exhibition features artwork produced during the Information Age, a period of unprecedented technological growth that began in the mid-twentieth century. The works presented here exemplify the role television, scientific technology, the internet, digital imaging, and artificial intelligence have had in shaping the way artists view the present and what lies ahead. They also highlight how culture and identity can intersect with concepts of the future, including Afrofuturism and Indigenous Futurism.

Things to Come: Time, Technology, and the Future is curated by Patricia Lee Daigle, Ph.D., Chief Curator.

All exhibitions at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art are underwritten by the MBMA Exhibition Fund: Lead support provided by Kay Clark, and Maggie and Milton Lovell, with additional funding from Anonymous, Irene and Ron Ayotte, Gloria and Kenneth Boyland, Deborah and Bob Craddock, Susan and James Edelman, Debi and Galen Havner, Sally Hergenrader, James R. Humphreys, Betty and George Johnson, Kristen and Jay Keegan, Valerie and Carl Person, Deborah D. Tipton, Bill Townsend, and the Doris S. and Hubert Kiersky Charitable Remainder Trust.