Museum partnership in New York invites visitors to take fragments of digital artwork home

The Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) in New York and the Tezos Foundation have launched a one-year collaboration Museum without wallsto encourage artists who use new technologies in their work and to involve the museum’s audience in the collecting process (for free). Visitors to MoMI can purchase a free digital art fragment from moving image works projected onto the giant media wall in the museum’s lobby. These fragments will be certified on Tezos, the art-centric blockchain known for its focus on sustainability and a low carbon footprint.

Starting Friday, June 28, visitors to the museum in Astoria, Queens, will find an interactive station in the museum lobby where they can purchase and take home fragments from free open editions of newly created digital art. “In addition, some open editions will be made available online through the museum’s website,” the museum’s announcement said. “All digital artwork will be minted on the Tezos blockchain.”

The first open edition on offer comes from celebrated net artist Auriea Harvey, an early adopter of the Tezos platform, who has an exhibition at the museum through December 1. At the same time, the museum is displaying works on its Herbert S. Schlosser Media Wall. The first exhibition of its kind is titled Easel Motorand will show the works of five artists: firstly the Brazilian artist Sabato Visconti and then pieces by John ProvencherEstelle FloresAiladi and LuYang.

Regina Harsanyi, deputy curator of media art at the Museum of the Moving Image, tells The art newspaper that the decision to offer fragments of works in a museum builds on a long history of participatory installation art. She cites the works of Carlos Motta, Yoko Ono, Louise Lawler, Carsten Höller and Félix González Torres as examples.

“This concept is not new, it just hasn’t been explored much by museums in the context of media art,” she says, highlighting the work of New York-based Colombian artist Motta. A brief history of US interventions in Latin America since 1946 (2004-06) – a free newspaper-style handout presenting two timelines: one on US interventions since the 1940s and one on guerrilla movements in the region – as the kind of work that the Museum without walls Project.

Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, Head of Arts at TriliTech, the London-based R&D and entrepreneurial team supporting the Tezos blockchain, tells The art newspaper that Tezos has “worked on many museum partnerships to make it easier for people to collect artworks.” (Tezos worked with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) on its Postcards blockchain project in 2023.)

“Tezos recognized that MoMI aligned with our values,” says Artamonovskaja, “and was open to bringing blockchain to the museum in this way and letting others interact with it. So we worked together to define the program.” She says there has been a lot of direct collaboration, “in line with what we want to show other (institutions), which is exciting.”

“We are thrilled to partner with the Tezos Foundation – and to showcase original work at the intersection of art and technology,” said Aziz Isham, Executive Director of MoMI. “MoMI continues to be the place where people see the future for the first time.”

Artamonovskaja sees the project, with the “ethereal piece” of digital art “that you take home,” as “building up the idea of ​​museums going outside and breaking down the walls of museums. It’s not a work of art, it’s not a souvenir shop. It’s something in between. And I think that’s something new.” “And maybe that’s a continuation of the work of art,” she says, “that you go home and keep thinking and getting inspired… What does technology mean, what does blockchain technology mean? (These are) some of the questions that artists experimenting with technology want to ask the audience.”

For Harsanyi, the program is part of the museum’s mission to “introduce artists experimenting with digital tools to a broad, diverse audience. This has been happening since the early 1960s.” It is also part of her desire to prove that “museums are not mausoleums and that museums exist beyond their own walls.” It is a continuation, she says, of “the idea that you can experience art outside of the proverbial white cube.”

• Museum without walls: Momi x Tezos, Museum of the Moving Image, New York, 28 June 2024—29 June 2025
• Auriea Harvey: My veins are the wires, my body is your keyboard, Museum of the Moving Image, New York, until September 1