Net Art's Preservation Crisis: Turbulence Archive Seeks Museum Home

Net Art faces a dual crisis of linguistic obscurity and physical preservation. Turbulence.org, a US-based non-profit that has supported and distributed Net Art for twenty years, is now forced to transfer its archive due to dwindling funding. The digital immateriality of Net Art is paradoxically heavy, requiring significant resources for maintenance as software evolves and disappears. The archive has been offered to MoMA and the Whitney Museum, with Rhizome acting as intermediary, but no agreement has been reached. Lorenzo Taiuti, art and media critic and professor at Sapienza University of Rome, discusses these challenges in an article for Artribune Magazine #32, questioning whether a long-standing artistic movement can find a place in contemporary art conservation.