5 Case Study 1 - Leicester Research Archive - University of Leicester

they see is outside the referential system that museums or other types of art
spaces, offer.
Shulgin believes that in the early stages of web-based art, the art world
institutions were not necessary for displaying it, however, now he feels “that we
really need somebody to take care of distribution. (…) if everybody is online, if
anybody makes webpages, it will become overwhelming. Who would search for
grains of gold in all this shit?” 95 Thomas Banovich, who was one of the first
gallery owners in New York to show New Media Art, made a similar
observation: “When I started [1994-95], you could find everyone and every site
because there were so few of them and everybody was actively looking and
reaching out for works because there was little else interesting there. But in a
very short period the Web became commercialised, the whole way of treating the
Web changed, and the works were lost in the sea of commerce.” 96
What this suggests is that some sort of curation of web-based art seems to be
very useful if the goal is to build upon the ever-stronger acceptance of digital
media as providers of authentic experiences of the arts and culture. At the same
time, there are also critics who question the recent involvement of museums in
web-based art, because it supposedly places it into a context that is alien to its
purpose. Sarah Cook, for instance, argues that, curating web-based art will
ultimately “kill” it. According to her, web-based art’s intrinsic quality is that it
fosters communication between artists and a larger community of practitioners.
She argues that this dialogue is changing through online forums hosted by
museums, as these bring net art into the museum’s larger educational mandate to
contextualize the art on view. Hence, it does not only change the perception of it
but also its creation. 97 Howard Besser argues on similar lines but is more
concerned about the museum as institution of authority, arguing that
“when the patron no longer has to visit the gallery or museum in
order to see a particular image, the authority of the institution will
95 Ibid.
96 Sarah Cook, Graham Beryl and Sarah Martin, p.37.
97 Sarah Cook, “Has curating killed net art?” http://absoluteone.ljudmila.org/sarah_cook1.php (as
of 20.11.2004).
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