Dataland, the first museum of AI arts, sets opening date and first exhibition

New media artist Refik Anadol announced the opening date for Dataland. (Refik Anadol Studio for Dataland) By Jessica Gelt Arts Editor Follow April 23, 2026 6 AM PT 4 min Click here to listen to this article Share via Close extra sharing options Email Facebook X LinkedIn Threads Reddit WhatsApp Copy Link URL Copied! Print 0:00 0:00 1x This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. After more than two and a half years of research, planning and construction, Dataland, the world’s first museum of AI arts, will open June 20. Co-founded by new media artists Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç, the museum anchors the $1-billion Frank Gehry-designed Grand LA complex across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. Its first exhibition, “Machine Dreams: Rainforest,” created by Refik Anadol Studio, was inspired by a trip to the Amazon and uses vast data sets to immerse visitors in a machine-generated sensory experience of the natural world. The architecture of the space, which Anadol calls “a living museum,” is used to reflect distant rainforest ecosystems, including changing temperature, light, smell and visuals. Anadol refers to these large-scale, shimmering tableaus as “digital sculptures.” Advertisement Entertainment & Arts LACMA spent nearly $724 million on the David Geffen Galleries — here’s how it was all used LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries will open April 19 after about six years of construction. The building cost nearly $724 million — here’s where that money went. April 8, 2026 “This is such an important technology, and represents such an important transformation of humanity,” Anadol said in an interview. “And we found it so meaningful and purposeful to be sure that there is a place to talk about it, to create with it.”The 35,000-square-foot privately funded museum devotes 25,000 square feet to public space, with the remaining 10,000 square feet holding the in-house technology that makes the space run. Dataland contains five immersive galleries and a 30-foot ceiling. An escalator by the entrance will transport guests to the experiences below. The museum declined to say how much Dataland, designed by architecture firm Gensler, cost to build. An isometric architectural rendering of Dataland. The 25,000-square-foot AI arts museum also contains an additional 10,000 square feet of non-public space that holds its operational technology. (Refik Anadol Studio for Dataland) Advertisement Dataland will collect and preserve artificial intelligence art and is powered by an open-access AI model created by Anadol’s studio called the Large Nature Model. The model, which does not source without permission, culls mountains of data about the natural world from partners including the Smithsonian, London’s Natural History Museum and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. This data, including up to half a billion images of nature, will form the basis for the creation of a variety of AI artworks, including “Machine Dreams.” “AI art is a part of digital art, meaning a lineage that uses software, data and computers to create a form of art,” Anadol explained. “I know that many artists don’t want to disclose their technologies, but for me, AI means possibilities. And possibilities come with responsibilities. We have to disclose exactly where our data comes from.”Sustainability is another responsibility that Anadol takes seriously. For more than a decade, Anadol has devoted much thought to the massive carbon…

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