The Los Angeles County Museum of Art Monday announced the acquisition of what’s considered the first and largest collection of digital art to enter an American art museum.
As a result of a gift from a collector who goes by the pseudonym Cozomo de’ Medici, 22 digital works of art by a group of international artists are now part of or promised to the museum’s permanent collection.
The pieces by a group of 13 artists from Brazil, Canada, China, England, Germany, Portugal and the United States span 2017 to 2022, and reflect the growth of artistic experimentation with online technologies like blockchain that have been budding since the 2010s, the museum said.
“For decades, artists have incorporated technology within their practice, and the intersection of art and technology has been central to LACMA’s programming since the ’60s,” LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director Michael Govan said. “As one of the first museums to support artists’ experimentation with technology, it’s fitting that LACMA would receive the first museum collection of blockchain art.”
Blockchain facilitates the work of artists who rely on computer algorithms or digital elements to create their artwork.
De’ Medici tweeted of the hope “that this donation helps forever cement the on-chain art movement in the canon of art history” and paves the way “for museums everywhere to hold the greatest digital works alongside the greatest physical” pieces.
The news comes just after Sunday’s opening of the exhibition “Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952-1982,” which explores artistic practices in relation to the rise of computer technology and consciousness in the age of the mainframe, which will be on view at LACMA through July 12.
