Description

Rhizome (RH) is the leading arts organization dedicated to born-digital art and culture. Founded in 1996 and affiliated with the New Museum since 2003, RH is an anchor tenant of NEW INC, the first museum-led incubator. Rhizome has played an integral role in establishing the definition and trajectories of art engaged with networked technologies. Today, RH preserves and documents, as well as champions, new and emerging artistic practices that have yet to find support elsewhere.   
Since 1999, RH’s archive, ArtBase (RH/AB), has provided interactive online access to born-digital art. With more than 2,300 artworks accessible without charge, RH/AB is a vital infrastructure through which scholars, educators, students, curators, artists, libraries, and the general public can encounter or learn about digital art. Through 2009, RH/AB accrued works via a novel open-accession process, wherein any self-identified artist could transfer an “artist proof” copy of their work, retaining ownership and copyright while assigning RH/AB the right to exhibit and explicate the work via scholarship and programming. Facing the imminent technical obsolescence of its holdings, the organization then shifted to prioritizing preservation of works in the collection. Beginning in 2014, RH/AB’s began to develop software to improve access, and in 2021 the resource was relaunched as a Linked Open Data archive offering new modes of access and integrated information.  
RH/AB now seeks support for an inaugural curator (half-time, term) charged with researching the archive, accessioning new works, contributing to data improvement, and expanding and enhancing the visibility of the archive through scholarly and public publications and programs. The work will underpin a key shift of focus from preservation research to accessibility. The collection-building portion of the work will aim to make the archive a more comprehensive record of born-digital art and culture, including the addition of previously underrecognized practices.   
RH/AB sees the creation of this position as particularly timely, allowing the organization to launch its new public-facing work at a moment of new curiosity about digital art, and as museums increasingly face challenges around collecting and effectively maintaining and exhibiting digital artworks at scale. RH/AB sees the archives curator position as mission critical, and at the close of the grant period plans to transition the post to a permanent one included in its general operating budget. (The timing of this grant would follow a major “change capital” grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that is currently supporting organizational improvements including the appointment of a Development Director.)