ATLAS is an online multimedia publishing project that activates the New Museum’s Digital Archive in relationship to contemporary discussions about art-making, curation, culture, and criticism. ATLAS places the New Museum’s extensive archive in direct conversation with its current moment to explore how a museum with a mission of the “new” can understand and activate its own past. Loosely inspired by Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, ATLAS is likewise interested in “knowledge through montage” and the “spatial and temporal ‘migrations’ [Wanderungen]” of images—but also the migration of concepts, conversations, and practices that underpin their creation and reception as works of art.

Each season of ATLAS is updated with new features three times over the course of a given exhibition cycle and centers on a theme shared by the Museum’s current exhibitions, linking them to a selection of artists, exhibitions, public programs, or projects from the Museum’s history. ATLAS contextualizes the Digital Archive’s documentation of the past—including video, audio, writing, images, and ephemera—through this theme, telling engaging stories that enrich the public’s experience of current exhibitions and contribute to a scholarly record of contemporary art. 

ATLAS can be used in the galleries, in the classroom, for scholarly research, or for personal enjoyment.