
Artists in the digital age and presenting art online, as well as exhibiting online art in offline spaces, were the focus of a couple of panels at Internet Week, a citywide festival examining the digital landscape that was held May 14 to 21.


Earlier this month, the J. Paul Getty Trust announced that it was cutting 34 jobs in its museum division. In and of itself, this wasn’t huge news; despite the absurdly booming art market, the national economy continues to sag, meaning museums have to contend with smaller endowments and less generous donors. But while museum cuts are nothing new, the Getty case is notable because of the fact that the cuts fall almost entirely on the institution’s education department.

It’s a sunny Friday morning in midtown Manhattan, and at the education building of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the second day of the conference “Critical Play — The Game as an Art Form” begins its debates. I’m no video gaming expert, but with 50 other physical attendees and many more over live stream, I vow to learn how video games can be better understood within an art context, as they’ve been the new art frontier for some time.

Jayson Musson aka Hennessy Youngman aka Mr. AKA’s might proclaim himself to be many things (including Mitt Romney’s drug dealer), but Tuesday night at Electronic Arts Intermix’s (EAI) screening of his web series Art Thoughtz, Musson seemed reluctant to embrace his identity as an art world celebrity. He pointed to the fact that in total, his videos had only received a little over two million views, which is nothing special in comparison with other viral video stars.

It’s hard to believe that Recess Art, the Soho-based nonprofit, is only three years old and has already made significant waves in the city’s art scene as a place where artists are free to explore process in every which way. “It’s a space where you realize projects you can’t realize anywhere else,” founder and executive director Allison Weisberg says, and she really means it.