"Pictures From the Moon," Holograms at the New Museum Holograms haven't been cool for a long time. I'm old enough to remember when they were, at least to a 1980s kid raised on "Star Wars" and "Jem and the Holograms." Somehow they've been left out of the great 3-D revival, confined to credit cards, scanners and other useful but dull items. Dean Randazzo, Private Collection "Untitled #2" (1995), a reflection hologram on glass plate by Eric Orr. True, the reincarnation of Tupac Shakur at this spring's Coachella festival had everyone talking about holograms for a millisecond. But it turned out that Tupac wasn't actually a hologram; he was a digital animation projected on glass, using a 19th-century magician's trick, no less. "Pictures From the Moon: Artists" Holograms 1969-2008," at the New Museum beginning on July 5, should restore some of the hologram's original techno-futuristic cachet. Accompanying a larger survey of art and technology called "Ghosts in the Machine," it will explore the various ways artists have used holograms since they were introduced in the 1960s. Bruce Nauman, one of the earliest adopters, reacted to the hologram's eerie compression of three dimensions into two with awkward self-portraits in which he pretends to press up against the picture plane. More recently, James Turrell has been using holograms to create abstract compositions with the shimmering, fugitive qualities of his light-and-space installations. The show will include works by both of these artists, and some others whose interest in the medium may surprise you (Ed Ruscha, Louise Bourgeois). So while everyone else is donning 3-D glasses for the big summer blockbusters, I'll be going back to the future at the New Museum.