Media Artists Confront an Old Problem: Museums Lacking Technical Savvy

In the winter of 2017, I was visiting the Stedelijk Museum with net art pioneer Jan Robert Leegte to see an exhibition of recent acquisitions. He was excited to show me his influential work Scrollbar Composition (2000). After winding through pristinely lit galleries filled with impressive paintings and sculptures, we arrived at a rather modest, dimly lit room where a series of browser-based works were shown in touch-screen vitrines. I noticed Leegte’s expression of pride deflate into one o