By 1995 the digital chip and CD-ROM--technologies not usually associated with art exhibitions--were promising to usurp the role of audio headsets in prerecorded tours and to provide innovative features that could change the way museums and works of art were perceived.
Since 1993 a number of art museums and galleries had offered handheld "wands" that allowed visitors to listen to commentaries about various displays or to access interactive computer stations to receive additional information at random and in greater or less detail, as desired. These and other developing technologies inevitably ignited a debate whether the technology was being used as an educational tool or seen as an end in itself. Though some feared that the technology could distract from the objects on view, to others the new horizons opened by technology promised exciting developments.
In New York City the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum mounted a retrospective of German artist Georg Baselitz that demonstrated some new possibilities. Many of the show’s 100 paintings were labeled with codes that matched recordings by various commentators, including observations by the artist. Visitors could rent a "soundtrack," a telephone-like wand, and selectively listen to these comments by entering the appropriate code. A diverse group of museum patrons with different tastes, backgrounds, or interests could gain differing, and perhaps more appropriate, appreciations of Baselitz’ figurative paintings and inverted canvases.
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Permanent museum and gallery collections were making use of new technology as well. The National Gallery in London offered for rental a portable CD-ROM player with recorded comments on works in the permanent collection. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., opened a Micro Gallery, which featured computer terminals with touch screens. Visitors could access information about the museum’s collection (organized by subject, period, artist, or geography) and make use of sound, pictures, and text. After the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University, Atlanta, Ga., developed a "virtual museum" on the Internet, larger numbers of patrons were able to "visit" by using home-based computer technology.
Art created on computers was a popular subject of discussion. Though such art appeared mostly in private galleries rather than in public museums, the tide was shifting as new opportunities offered by digital technology intrigued artists, curators, and visitors. The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London held a series of shows and talks devoted to computer art entitled "Access All Areas: Visions of the Future."
In September at the Serpentine Gallery in London, an exhibition entitled "The Maybe" offered fuel for the perennial debate "What is art?" Enormous publicity brought more than 20,000 people in one week to the show, which featured possessions of famous personalities from the past and a Sleeping Beauty-like display. Artist Cornelia Parker and actress Tilda Swinton collaborated on the exhibit, which showcased Swinton lying in repose in a glass box for eight hours per day. This display attracted far more attention than such inanimate objects as a 50-year-old cigar that had belonged to Winston Churchill, a quill pen that had been used by Charles Dickens, or ice skates that had been owned by the late Duchess of Windsor. The show demonstrated how performance art--though lacking in paint, canvas, design, colour, or line--could stimulate emotional response as thoroughly as conventional visual art. But many asked nonetheless if it was art.
Conventional shows proliferated, especially those devoted to the Impressionists and dealing with familiar themes. Paul Cézanne was the subject of a comprehensive exhibition, the first large show of his work in 60 years, on view at the Grand Palais in Paris and then at the Tate Gallery in London. In 1996 the exhibit would travel to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The London show included nearly 100 of about 800 known paintings by Cézanne as well as about 60 watercolours and