NEW YORK, NY.- The New Museum’s cultural incubator NEW INC today announced DEMO2025, a three-day art, design, and technology festival featuring industry leaders and NEW INC members running from June 4–22 with an opening program taking place June 4–6 at WSA 180 Maiden Lane in Manhattan’s Financial District. Through demonstrations, exhibitions, performances, workshops, and talks, this free public festival will spotlight innovative projects created by 43 current NEW INC members whose interdisciplinary work spans art, design, technology, science, architecture, and entrepreneurship.

Founded in 2014 as the first museum-born cultural incubator, NEW INC supports a cohort of approximately 120 creative practitioners each year with a values-driven program including professional development, mentorship, and community building opportunities. As part of NEW INC’s work connecting members with industry leaders, “Demo Day” was launched in 2016 to showcase member projects before an invitation-only audience of creative directors, investors, and curators, offering insight into the next generation of interdisciplinary projects. In 2023, DEMO opened to the public with free admission and an extended program of performances, keynote talks, exhibitions, and opportunities to interact with NEW INC’s community of mentors and alumni.

“Collaboration is a core component of NEW INC’s program, and DEMO2025 will serve as a major opportunity to cross pollinate ideas and bring together our members and alumni with the larger public,” said Salome Asega, Director of NEW INC. “We are excited to see how NEW INC members’ work on a wide range of topics—including designing architectural and spatial interventions for public space, leveraging XR tools to create reimagined worlds, finding cooperative models for community building, and making scientific practices part of our daily life—connect with a broader audience.”

“NEW INC’s DEMO festival encapsulates the New Museum’s commitment to providing a platform for the latest innovations in art and technology,” added Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director of the New Museum. “As work continues on the New Museum’s OMA-designed building expansion, we look forward to gathering our community at WSA and learning from this new generation of artists.”

DEMO2025 will feature keynote speakers including animator and artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, marine biologist and writer Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, multidisciplinary artist Gabriel Massan, entrepreneur and writer Yancey Strickler, and landscape architect Sara Zewde. Alongside the mainstage talks, DEMO2025 will also feature Studio DEMO, a broadcast hub for short interviews, podcast recordings, musical performances, and more, as well as five Track Showcases, exhibitions of new and evolving work by NEW INC members organized by guest curators on view through June 22. Following the daytime programming on June 4 and 5, Jen Sillen (Rash, Club Cringe) and Sam Rolfes (Team Rolfes) will unveil DISKOKINA, a mixed-reality club theater program featuring music, special guests, live performances, and the titular DISKOKINA, its central character, mascot, and AI superfan.

As work continues on the OMA-designed expansion of the New Museum, which will include the first purpose-built home for NEW INC, DEMO2025 will be hosted by Water Street Projects at WSA 180 Maiden Lane, a hub for artists, producers, and creative businesses in Manhattan's Financial District.

NEW INC’s Year 11 cohort members presenting at DEMO2025 include participants in five tracks: Art & Code, considering the future of internet-based art in collaboration with Rhizome; Creative Science, exploring modes of scientific inquiry to advance creativity and storytelling; Extended Realities, examining the artistic potentials of technology to blur the physical and digital worlds; Social Architecture, rooting design and architecture practices in community-centered, ecologically-engaged thinking; and Cooperative Studies, exploring community and worker-centered models for planning, funding, and governing. At DEMO2025, each of the five tracks will feature a keynote speaker, presentations by current track members, and a showcase, which may take the form of an exhibition, an installation, or another mode of collective presentation that will remain on view for the duration of the festival, June 4–22.