“She doesn’t passively genuflect in front of art history,” Massimiliano Gioni, the artistic director of the New Museum, in New York City, has said of the American artist Nicole Eisenman. “She resurrects it and camouflages it into our present.” So while Eisenman’s figurative paintings and sculptures draw elements from Renaissance and Baroque art, as well as from Social Realism, they are energized by the color and kinetics of contemporary life and its conflicts. For this major installation, which comes after big shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and Hauser & Wirth, in Paris, Eisenman has toppled an industrial crane, then fitted it with sculptural objects. The purpose? It’s a nod to the Dada artist Marcel Duchamp, and is also meant to signify the failure of our machines. —Elena Clavarino