Curating in the Era of Time-Based and Digital Media Art

“Theses about the developmental tendencies of art under present conditions of production . . . brush aside a number of outmoded concepts, such as creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery. . .” – Walter Benjamin (1936) “Do we claim to understand [Walter] Benjamin only now?” – Richard Shiff (2008)

The growing field of the digital humanities reflects the ever-broadening adoption by scholars of new electronic tools and the ongoing development of new opportunities for collaborative research and dissemination of their projects. What of digital curation? What implications does the growing presence of digital media art in the museum have for curators who seek both to care for and interpret these collections? With a nod to Walter Benjamin’s recognition of the paradigmatic shift of the understanding of visual art and culture in the era of mass reproduction, this presentation will offer a curatorial perspective on the philosophic, aesthetic, and practical implications of collecting and exhibiting time-based and digital art at the Smithsonian and beyond. Based at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, I will address both how born digital time-based artwork reflects and shapes new ways of understanding the self and other, and the practical considerations associated with overseeing these new additions to our collection. How have these new works changed our practices and assumptions as scholars and caretakers? To this end, I will speak to the formation of the Smithsonian’s Time-Based and Digital Media Working Group and to the challenges and opportunities posed by new electronic media in the realm of the fine arts.