Museums & Digital Art Day
Welcome to the Conference on the Future of Digital Art in Institutions
Supported by the Tezos Foundation and hosted by Diane Drubay and RightClickSave, this conference welcomes critical and forward-thinking discussions, bringing together pioneering voices from across the digital art ecosystem. As the impact of digital media on creative practices and audience engagement is accelerating, museums are redefining their roles of preserving, collecting, and displaying into active creators of digital art's present and future.
Through a series of round tables and conversations, we will look at issues of collection building, curatorial strategies, institutional infrastructures, and writing the history of digital art. From the emergence of digital collections to the creation of new digital art museums, this programme invites us to think about how museums can meaningfully engage with a medium that is constantly transforming.
Doors open at 09:30 with coffee and croissants. We look forward to welcoming you.
Schedule
09:30 - 10:00
Door Open with Coffee & Croissant
10:00 - 10:05
Welcome Remark by Diane Drubay, Founder at We Are Museums & Conference & Program Manager at ArtMeta (France)
10:05 - 10:10
Opening Remark by Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, Head of Arts, Trilitech, Tezos Ecosystem (United Kingdom)
10:10 - 10:45
Collecting in Transition—From Private to Public Collections
As the digital art revolution transforms collecting practices, the line between private and public collections is being redefined. From art acquisition and governance, visibility to value assessment, collecting today is not the same as it was. Collector-led museums to blockchain-native acquisitions are new models that challenge the old models, exploring what truly means for a collection to “go public” today.
Moderator: Anika Meier, Curator and Writer, The Second-Guess (Germany)
Speakers:
- Ian Charles Stewart, Director TMA Labs, Toledo Museum of Art (United States)
- Sabine Himmelsbach, Director, HEK (House of Electronic Arts) (Switzerland)
- Benjamin Gross, aka Benny Redbeard, Art Patron (United States)
- Auriea Harvey, Artist (Italy)
10:55 - 11:25
Museums without Walls
The yearlong collaboration between the Tezos Foundation and the Museum of the Moving Image has displayed artists as part of three curations: Easel Engine, Community Curation and Compositions in Code. Building on these projects, the panel discusses museum visitor engagement and the role of blockchain technology in facilitating new connections between museums, artists and the public, while taking the art beyond museum walls.
Moderator: George Nelson, UK Reporter, ARTnews (United Kingdom)
Speakers:
- Vinciane Jones, Art Partner Manager, Trilitech, Tezos Ecosystem (United Kingdom)
- Regina Harsanyi, Associate Curator of Media Arts, Museum of Moving Image (United States)
- Marius Watz, Artist (Norway)
11:25 - 11:45
Coffee Break
11:45 - 12:25
Opening A Digital Art Museum Today
Museums have consistently adapted to societal technological advancements and critical needs, and, today, digital museums accelerate this process further. Whether led by artists directly, private collectors or corporations, these new models are rethinking what a museum is in a world where code is both medium and message, going beyond the white cube, beyond the metaverse.
Moderator: Marlene Corbun, Head Curator, laCollection (France)
Speakers:
- Erin Dragotto, Executive Director, The Museum of Art + Light (United States)
- Elena Carbajal, Head of Arts, Onkaos Foundation (Spain)
- Vicente Matallana, Director, New Art Foundation (Spain)
- Susanna Barla, Co-Founder, General Partner, Creators Fund (United States)
12:30 - 12:55
Conversation: Poetic Arrangements
In this talk, curator Julia Staudach and literary artist Ana María Caballero will share experiences, challenges and opportunities in exhibiting poetry as art, both in virtual and IRL institutional settings. Specifically, they’ll discuss Arrangements, a series commissioned by the Francisco Carolinum Museum from Caballero, as well as reveal details from a collaborative project in development.
- Ana Maria Caballero, literary artist, cofounder theVERSEverse (Spain)
- Julia Staudach (aka Tschuuuly), Curator, OOELKG Francisco Carolinum (Austria)
13:00 - 14:00
The Canons of Digital Art
Museums play a key role in the canonisation of new and emerging art forms, including digital art. This conversation with curators and artists from around the world considers how museums determine which artists and practices get to be included in exhibitions and collections. As history unfolds across a panoply of social media platforms, institutions (including on-chain institutions) continue to play a vital role in archiving new histories in real time. This session explores the distributed authorship and architecture of art history today.
Moderator: Alex Estorick, Editor-in-Chief, Right Click Save (United Kingdom)
Speakers:
- Christiane Paul, Curator of Digital Art, Whitney Museum of American Art (United States)
- Melanie Lenz, Curator, Digital Art, V&A Museum (United Kingdom)
- Marcella Lista, Chief Curator, New Media Dept., Centre Pompidou (France)
- Kevin Abosch, artist, Kevin Abosch Studio (France)
14:00 - 14:05
Closing Remarks by Diane Drubay, Founder at We Are Museums & Conference & Program Manager at ArtMeta (France)
14:05 - 14:30
Networking
14:30
End