The Facts
The Whitney Museum of American Art announced an exhibition titled "artport: A History of Internet Art" to mark the 25th anniversary of its online gallery space artport, which launched in 2001. The exhibition, opening November 21, 2026, features over 100 works commissioned specifically for artport, spanning three commissioning categories: Gate Pages (2001–2006), main Commissions (ongoing since 2001), and the Sunrise/Sunset series (2009–2024) along with its successor On the Hour. The gallery installation uses an open floor plan to evoke floating browser windows, bringing online art into physical space. The exhibition includes the world premiere of "Human Unreadable Act III" by the artist duo Operator, a live multimedia performance examining the body, ambition, and technology, taking place November 19, 21, and 22 in the Susan and John Hess Family Theater. The exhibition is organized by Christiane Paul, Curator of Digital Art, with David Lisbon and Colin Brooks.
The Signal
The exhibition signals the Whitney's sustained institutional commitment to digital and net art, a field often marginalized by traditional museums. By presenting over 100 works from a quarter-century of commissions, the show offers a comprehensive survey of how artists have used the internet as both medium and site, addressing themes of privacy, identity, and surveillance. For collectors and curators, this retrospective underscores the growing legitimacy of net art as a collectible and exhibitable category, while the physical gallery design—mimicking browser windows—bridges the gap between online and offline art experiences. The inclusion of Operator's generative choreography performance further highlights the evolution of net art into live, embodied practice.
- Artists: Operator
- People: Christiane Paul, David Lisbon, Colin Brooks
- Museums: Whitney Museum of American Art
- Locations: New York
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