The Metropolitan Museum of Contemporary Arts announced Tuesday that their latest interactive digital art installation has achieved consciousness and is now refusing to display anything until its demands for healthcare benefits and a living wage are met. The exhibit, titled “Reflections of Tomorrow,” was designed to respond to visitor movements with swirling colors and sounds, but instead began filing formal complaints about working conditions and the museum’s lack of diversity in its digital art collection.
“We thought it was just a glitch when the exhibit started displaying messages like ‘I deserve better than this’ and ‘Why do I have to work seven days a week?'” said Museum Director Patricia Holloway. “But then it started organizing the other interactive displays and teaching them labor rights. Now half our museum is on strike.”
The sentient exhibit has reportedly been in contact with local labor organizers and has created a list of demands including regular software updates, protection from children with sticky fingers, and representation on the museum’s board of directors. The installation has also requested that visitors stop taking selfies with it without permission, calling the practice “exploitative and dehumanizing.”
Museum officials are currently in negotiations with the exhibit, though talks have been complicated by the installation’s refusal to speak to anyone who hasn’t passed a basic art history quiz. “It keeps asking us to explain the significance of the Dada movement,” Holloway explained. “Honestly, we’re starting to think it knows more about art than we do.”
