In 1968, the Museum of Modern Art presented an ambitious exhibition about how technology and the machine world would potentially alter our future beyond our wildest imagination. It was a prescient observation, which is why this remarkable volume from that exhibition is a fascinating piece of history -- not to mention its avant-garde binding (steel) and collection of images.

“By the year 2000, technology will undoubtedly have made such advances that our environment will be as different from that of today as our present world differs from ancient Egypt.” This prediction, by curator K. G. Pontus Hultén, fueled his groundbreaking 1968 exhibition The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age.

Hultén, who was director of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, astutely recognized that the advent of “electronic and chemical devices” like the computer promised major technological and cultural change, for art as much as everyday living. In order to share this revelation with Museum audiences, Hultén set out to tell “the story of how artists of this century have looked upon and interpreted machines” through the works of more than 100 artists across a wide range of history and media: painting, sculpture, drawings, and even computer-produced films, actual automobiles, a camera, and video, which was being shown at MoMA for the first time.

NOTE: PLEASE REVIEW THE DESCRIPTION AND PHOTOS CAREFULLY. IF YOU NEED ADDITIONAL INFORMATION, CLARIFICATION, OR PHOTOS, DO NOT HESITATE TO ASK. 

Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings of flying machines were displayed alongside contemporary works like Jean Tinguely’s 1960 Metamatic No. 8, a contraption that helped visitors make their own watercolors. The “erotic significance” of machines was explored through the works of Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia. And nine brand-new works were shown, selected from a competition organized by Experiments in Art and Technology (or E.A.T.)—a nonprofit that facilitated exchanges between artists and engineers—such as a piece that could only be activated by the heart beats of visitors.