I often quote Matt Fuller's essay re Tate Mongrel about artists using
the museum. How can a museum position itself to be well-used by the
artist?

"It is in finding room for their web-site to be cack-handed, damning,
unpredictable and full of bad memories in the way that it has with
Harwood's appropriation of the site that the Tate succeeds, possibly
as the first institution of its kind to do so, to begin to deal with
work on the web more on its own terms than those of the museum. Whilst
this success is quite probably attributable to a confidence that art
cannot produce any trauma in the gallery's smooth public presentation
of itself, it is a fortuitous beginning that will hopefully be made
more of. JODI, the inventively bugged-out producers of sites and
downloadables such as 4045, OSS6 and SOD7 once claimed that,
"Net.artists live on the web". For artists working via the nets to now
involve museums as one of the media systems through which their work
circulates what is crucial is, alongside the avoidance of being simply
nailed down by the spotlight, to attempt to establish, not a comfy
mode of living for the museum on the networks, but a series of
prototypes for and chances at something other and more mongrel than
both."
Matt Fuller, "Art meet Net, Net meet Art"
http://www.tate.org.uk/webart/mat1.htm

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Curating digital art - www.newmedia.sunderland.ac.uk/crumb/
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Beryl Graham
> Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2001 4:45 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Big Media Art. March Theme of the Month
>
>
> Dear List,
>
> Our invited participant Barbara London has requested to respond
> off-list to particular questions from the editors, and so I am
> forwarding her response to my question concerning whether large
> institutions might be more of a 'closed system' than smaller ones.
> Beryl Graham

[snip]
>
> Right now the art world is unfocussed. Web art and
> media art are fresh and vital, and artists can take
> advantage of this open situation. Before too long the
> Web will probably become more like television, which
> means closed. The time is now.
>
>
> Barbara London, MoMA New York, 26 Mar 2001.
>