The International New Media Gallery (INMG) is an online museum. It specialises in moving image artwork, a medium successfully showcased on screens. The INMG is dedicated to evolving the experience of gallery going. Although access to the Internet and computers is not universal,1 neither are the demographics for physical museums.2 The INMG strives to expand and increase the audience for contemporary art. The gallery places art outside the physical museum, while providing an educational frame to encourage critical thought and discussion, both on and offline.
The INMG seeks to bring art to its potential audience, curating exhibitions in spaces outside of the physical museum. The context art is exhibited in shapes its reception and audience. Carol Duncan notes that the ‘lighting and architectural detail’ of certain material spaces service those ‘individuals who are perfectly predisposed socially, psychologically, and culturally to enact the museum ritual’, to the potential exclusion of others.3 The increasingly mobile nature of Internet access brought about with the proliferation of portable hardware platforms enables our exhibitions to be seen almost anywhere. In some of these spaces, like people’s homes, audiences may have more intimate relationships to their surroundings.
The INMG does not simply place artwork on the web, devoid of context. Our exhibitions present a framework of educational material and events. These include catalogues with art historical essays. The curators contribute to the INMG’s online forums to encourage a dialogue about the displays. By fostering such a conversation, we aim to create ‘the post-museum [where] the curator’s voice is one voice among many others’.4 A series of talks and seminars, ‘offline’ events, are held to coincide with exhibitions. This encourages learning, engagement and social interaction. The website itself is the foundation from which the gallery reaches out.
Notes
1 Julian Stallabrass, Internet Art: The Online Clash of Culture and Commerce (London: Tate, 2003), p.48-51; Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry) (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012, First Published 2011), p.137-138.
2 Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Darbel with Dominique Schnapper, in Caroline Beattie and Nick Merriman trans., The Love of Art: European Art Museums and their Public (Oxford and Cambridge: Polity Press and Blackwell, 1991, First Published 1969), p.14-15; Audience Knowledge Digest: Why People Visit Museums and Galleries, and What Can Be Done to Attract Them (Manchester: Morris Hargreaves McIntyre, 2007), p.22-23, p.175.
3 Carol Duncan, Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), p.12-13.
4 Konstantinos Arvanitis, ‘Museums Outside Walls: mobile phones and the museum in the everyday’, in Ross Parry ed., Museums in the Digital Age (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), p.171.