Danielle Calle, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Fall 2018, NEH
The New Museum of Contemporary Art, established in 1977, is Manhattan’s only contemporary arts museum, and one of the few institutions in the world exclusively dedicated to exhibiting the work of living artists experimenting in multimedia and experimental art forms. As a non-collecting institution, the archive is activated by the urgency to encapsulate programs and events as they unfold. While there, my principal task was to archive the exhibitions that fall under the First Look series using Webrecorder, an web archiving tool developed in-house by Rhizome. First Look, which began in 2012, is a completely digital exhibition space aimed towards showcasing the breadth of net art online. Currently (as of December 2018), there are 43 First Look works on view, with this set to grow indefinitely. Though the series originally aimed to represent web-based works exclusively, in recent years this has grown to represent a myriad of digital works, including emulations for CD-ROM games as well as mobile applications. My internship experience turned into an essential education in the documentation required of web records, and the unique considerations inherent to digital art assets. Under the supervision of archivist Amye McCarther and through extensive troubleshooting alongside Claire Fox (MIAP '20), we formulated a best-practices workflow for the museum's online exhibitions.
Danielle Calle interned at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in Fall 2018.
