The Story
In what is being viewed as a milestone for digital artists, the Whitney Museum of American Art is preparing to include Internet-based artworks in its biennial survey of American art next spring.
When the exhibition opens on March 23, as many as 10 digital works, from interactive Web sites to multimedia narratives, are expected to be displayed.
Up until this point, no major art gallery has recognized Internet Art. While some smaller galleries have attempted to do so, they have struggled with both technical and logistical problems.
"Museums are moving much more quickly to remain up to date with developments" in visual culture, stated Hanhardt, a representative of the Guggenheim Museum. "There's a sense that there's something happening with the Internet, so a new generation of curators feels this desire to bring it into the compass of an exhibition that's supposed to map the arts today."
The Art
Among the works that may be presented in the biennial are
- Jodi.org, website
- Grammatron, hypertext fiction
- Superbad.com, website
- Redsmoke.com, website
- Every Icon, software
- Blindspot, an interactive narrative
- Switch, web project
- Sampling Broadway, web project
- Fakeshop, website
- Auriea Harvey, website
- Redline
- CyGnet
- Volume One
- Belk Mignogna Associates
- Roz Dimon
- The Collusion Webart Frenzy
The Whitney
The Whitney Museum of American Art serves a unique and important place in the American art structure. The museum balances, with varying degrees of success, two separate identities: first, as an academically accepted museum that is respected among the most established museums of the world, and second, as a cutting edge showplace of the most avant-garde/anti-establishment work that is being produced in America today.
With this duality, the Whitney stands as the definitive voice of the art of our time; that is, it determines the art that will be canonized in generations to come.
The museum has remained successful in upholding the mission of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney to remain at the forefront of advancements in artistic and cultural philosophies. The introduction of web media into the museum is just another example of the Whitney's profound ability to be aware of the development of culture and then shed the light of academic respect and potential historical contextualization on what it feels will be a valid artistic and cultural medium of the future.
Other Museums
While the Whitney's catalogue of Internet art signals a milestone for the medium a few other museums and galleries, mostly European, have made forays into the realm of technology:
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