Collecting digital objectsThe real parallel of the museum collecting function is not to present information about the collection; it would be to collect digital objects.The timeline to the right is probably not exhaustive, particularly outside of North America, but neither is it likely to be a significant underestimation of institutions' collecting of digital objects and net art. It is somewhat heartening, however, that museums have been more serious about commissioning Web-based works of art. Dia Center for the Arts has commissioned 13 Web projects to date and has received a major grant from the Lila Wallace Foundation to continue to do so. "Since its inception, Dia has defined itself as a vehicle for the realization of extraordinary artists' projects that might not otherwise be supported by more conventional institutions. To this end it has always sought to facilitate direct and unmediated experiences between the audience and the artwork. Beginning in early 1995, Dia initiated this series of artists' projects for the web by commissioning significant projects from artists who are interested in exploring the aesthetic and conceptual potentials of this medium."The Walker Art Center's Gallery 9--a digital gallery--also has an active commissioning program, including a grant from the Jerome Foundation for "Emerging Artists/Emergent Medium." It has established a Digital Arts Study Collection, as a permanent, online collection of its commissions and other digital projects, including the pioneering Web site of artist projects, äda'web, and an online exhibition of 24 Web artworks, "Beyond Interface." The Guggenheim museum commissioned Shu Lea Cheang's Brandon: A One-Year Narrative Project in Installments as well as a series of curated links called CyberAtlas. "Begun in the spring of 1996, the CyberAtlas project is the first concerted effort to chart the cultural terrain known as cyberspace. Each of CyberAtlas' interactive maps represents the perspective of a different guest curator or artist who has reconnoitered this digital domain. The site also offers critical essays and a tour of other mapping projects online."The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art commissioned a project by Julia Scher, Predictive Engineering2, at the time of an installation of the same name at the museum. The Wexner Center for the Arts included Sawad Brooks' and Beth Stryker's DissemiNETion Web site as part of Body Mecanique: Artistic Explorations of Digital Realms. Nevertheless, it is artists themselves who have been the most prescient and proactive regarding net art. See, for instance, my essay, Curating (on) the Web.
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What digital objects should Museo de Monterrey collect?
next | previous | index January, 1995 - The Sentence was purchased by the late collector Eugene M. Schwartz and Mrs.Barbara Schwartz in January, 1995, both as form (an early disk) and content (the concept). Upon her husband's death, Mrs. Schwartz donated the original disk of its first day-signed by the artist "1/Infinity"-to the Whitney Museum of American Art. But it may still be viewed and engaged with at any time on its current site on the Web: one of the first works of art in the age of digital reproduction. Jane Bell (coroborated by David Ross.) November 1995 - Bowling Alley, a cybernetic installation and Web site by Shu Lea Cheang, Sawad Brooks, Beth Stryker, and Christa Erickson commissioned by the Walker Art Center
February, 1997 - "SFMOMA asked three Web sites to make donations to the museum's permanent collection. The works include @tlas Magazine; Funnel, a high-bandwidth design and media experiment, and three pieces from ada web, a curated art site in New York that asks artists to prepare new works for the Web. Another set of Web works is being collected as part of a fourth designer's overall work. The collected works will be cataloged on CD-ROM in the museum's graphics collection."
"I collect for design. Frankly I don't care very much about the content. For my collecting effort, what's important, really, is the appearance of the thing on the screen."
"While the Ars Electronica Center, the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany . . .and the Intercommunication Center in Tokyo routinely sponsor and acquire digital projects, few of their U.S. counterparts have done so." June 30, 1998 - Shu Lea Cheang's Brandon launches on the Guggenheim Web site. July 1998 - Olia Lialina launches Art.Teleportacia, an online gallery that sells Internet-based works by Lialina, Vuk Cosic and three other artists. (Mirapaul) October 1998 "Berlin-based graphic designer Holger Friese and Max Kossatz, a webmaster in Vienna, sold their Web-based work www.antworten.de ("answer") to a German collector, a transaction that included rights to the domain and a hard drive with all the necessary code in place." (Mirapaul) November 1998 - America Online donates äda'web to the Walker Art Center, which forms Digital Arts Study Collection. January 26, 1999 - Dia Center for the Arts announces a new alliance with Stadium, an independent web site for artists' projects. |