RE: [-empyre-] galleries & establishments

[Christiane_Paul@WHITNEY.ORG]

>Hi Christiane -

>I'm glad you bring up the topic of budget & politics. I am presently 
>working w/ the Musée du Québec on what will be the *first museum 
>presentation of net.art in Canada. It is a huge leap of faith on the 
>part of the institution - and they have really risen to the occasion. 
>The budget (now) is about 5x more than what they first had in mind - 
>they have been willing to invest (in more ways than one) in the 
>presentation etc. But I think that if they hadn't seen the Whitney 
>show "Data Dynamics" (for example), they may have never considered 
>showing net.art in the first place. It is (and has been) a very 
>enriching experience to talk about net.art to a completely new 
>community (the museum) - and they are very excited to show this kind 
>of work.

I think many institutions are and I believe that museums can play an
important role in supporting net art--due to the lack of an established
economic model for this type of art, galleries have a harder time since they
depend on sales.


>However, I'd like to ask, do you see the Whitney expanding its 
>support of net.art? And how? (eg. presentation, condervation, 
>collections etc.)

I think the Whitney is definitely trying to expand support of net art in all
the areas above. For me, the Biennial was an indication of the status of net
art / new media art at this point in time. Needless to say, the Biennial is
a huge survey show incorporating all kinds of artistic practice and within
that hierarchy, new media definitely isn't "on the level" yet. (Ironically,
the press often perceived it as "all new media" due to the number of
film/video works that were included -- the "old new media") There is a
growing number of new media exhibitions but I feel that the way new media
are represented within large survey shows is an indicator of where this art
form stands. Documenta also included only a very small amount of new media
work (some of it was installed quite impressively, although not all of it
was "translated" well into the physical space).