Today, many art organizations and museums are making an effort to decolonize and reframe their institutions' authority from ownership and objectivity to collaboration, transparency, and shared authority.  With this positive movement to transform our cultural organizations and institutions into places that encourage awareness and engagement, networks can expand and influence a more diverse public.  Inclusive museums can break down barriers and create more engagement with audiences by interacting with them in-depth.  Participatory institutions can share authority with their audiences.  The involvement of the audience does not immediately result in the sharing of the museum's power, but engagement encourages this more democratic museum process.  In these museums and art organizations, degrees of involvement are possible and enables museum professionals to think of participation and inclusion as catalysts to shared authority.

In the twenty-first century, the role of curators and directors has expanded as well, as throughout the world, they foster conversations to help people better understand social justice and address injustices and inequality through their curatorial practices and works. Each of these changes to curatorial practice or public programming supports the initial assertion that curators’ responsibilities have expanded, as they reflect on visions, questions, and challenges faced today and, in the future, and also bring awareness to isolated and silenced voices. 

As Sandell and Janes stated, “We submit that museum activism not only requires a willingness on the part of museum workers to exercise moral leadership in support of ethical issues, an openness to collaborative and participatory ways of working, that build relationships and strengthen networks well beyond the museum, thereby supporting broader efforts to bring about change.”^[1] When curators and directors utilize new media art effectively as a platform for expanding engagement, the exhibits can cause audiences to reflect on their connectedness and responsibilities to one another within society. This type of engagement will serve as a foundational aspect of advocacy, reflecting the practice of sponsoring dialogue about social justice and social-political issues.

To gather a perspective on this current transformation occurring within museum professionals’ curatorial practice and director’s works in cultural institutions, I began my investigation with a literature review of the definition of the art museums, the roles of art museums, curatorial activism, new media art, and new media art exhibitions. Additionally, I conducted nine interviews with museum professionals and arts organization directors from various countries: Germany, England, Korea, the United States, Canada, and France. Throughout this study, I argue that new media art has the potential to engage people, invite interactive, collaborative, and participatory ways of working, build relationships and strengthen networks, and thus foster broader opportunities for social justice and activism.  Those elements were explored and analyzed by means of first-person interviews, literature reviews, and analysis of industry movements and evolving practices. The body was organized into two parts; the results revealed different concepts from interviews and the study of scholarly works of literature. The case studies uncovered curatorial practices and specific works of interviewees.

In the section, Social Justice Discourse and Action in Larger Arts Organizations, the study focused on how new media art organizations and institutions promote creating and strengthening a diverse community. Three case studies were considered in greater depth for this discussion: Images Festival’s mission and vision, Global Art and the Museum at ZKM,and a three-year strategic project called, Museum as Site for Social Action at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. The case studies demonstrated how museums and art organizations evolve as inclusive, decolonized, and polyphonic environments and learn to incorporate the diversity of people's voices within their exhibits and programs.

In the section, Interaction, Participation, and Collaboration Using New Media Art, analysis of interviews with curators and directors revealed an increase in interactive, collaborative, and participatory ways of working through new media art exhibitions and programs to build relationships and strengthen networks.  New media art encourages networks that provide audiences opportunities to communicate, interact, and react to a real, lived moment or series of moments.  These types of exhibitions and programs allow audiences to forge meaningful bonds with other audiences, as they are inherently social and participatory, providing an immersive, engaging approach to social and political discourse.  I explored hands-on museum exhibitions (John Durant’s interview) and the creation of open learning spaces (the exhibition, Open Codes, at ZKM). Sometimes, curators, like Sarah Cook, work with new media in their curatorial practice to provide rich content to audiences outside of galleries and to improve interaction, participation, and collaboration. Curators like Anna Frants, Dominique Moulon, and Beryl Graham include interactive new media art in their exhibitions so that audiences are an integral part of the works, increasing a sense of connectedness and investment in the pieces. It should be noted that these types of non-traditional approaches to audiences have become increasingly important, as the global pandemic has challenged the ways in which people can view or engage with art and museums. 

New media art accelerates the potential of curatorial practices to become an alternative source of knowledge development because social issues are discussed in a participatory manner that empowers many voices to be heard simultaneously, defining and providing responses to the challenges facing society.  Community participation practices in exhibitions were also found to be a significant factor in enabling museums’ burgeoning roles as facilitators of social justice and activism, and new media art displays were seen as a key component to successfully achieving these goals.

The exhibition, Identity: yours, mine, ours, is an example of a social and ethical engagement exhibition that can expand audiences' political and social imagination and make exhibition spaces double as spaces for social justice.  An in-depth study by the Australian Research Council gathered student and instructor narratives, surveys, video journals, and focus group interview outcomes to document the exhibitions' impact.  The exhibition’s study showed an evaluation of the exhibition’s “appropriateness, feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness in reducing racism and increasing acceptance of racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity.”^[2]  Based on the Australian Research Council report, Identity: yours, mine, ours was able to build a more reflective and broader awareness of important issues by providing an effective, interactive approach to interacting with prejudice, racism, and identity interactions.^[3]  The research showed that offering audiences with chances to build intimate connections tended to disrupt multi- culturalism's policy narratives by enabling people to think more intensely about what perceptions they held.

New media art offers opportunities for individuals of all ages and backgrounds to connect with a subject through artistic practice and works, bringing home the educational importance of providing either a dialogue created by works or some other form of potential engagement. As Samuel La France stated, “The educational component can be linked to peoples’ interests in social justice and activism,”^[4] when curators and directors utilize new media art in their educational programs and workshops. The educational component can be related to the aspirations of people in social justice and advocacy.  Therefore, it is important for curators and directors to carefully examine the ways in which their programs' systems, connections, and intersections create ideas and thoughts that they want to present to the audience.  The increased effectiveness of new media art in achieving these aims can be seen in the work of new media art workshops (Nathalie Boseul Shin case) and expand the possibility for audiences to learn new media art and awareness of social issues (Jen Yeunho Kimjang case). Nathalie Boseul Shin also claims that the strength of media art is that it is possible to modify the format to suit any location. She stated, “One can put a single DVD in their bag, and then play it on the monitors provided in any exhibit in the exhibition hall or shoot the project onto a large screen.”^[5]

In the case study sections, curators’ and directors’ work were examined through interviews with Beryl Graham, Dominique Moulon, Jen Yeunho Kimjang, Nathalie Boseul Shin, and Philipp Ziegler.  Questions focused on how the interviewees helped bring about equality in their institutions and what they had found to be successful in making their organizations and institutions more inclusive spaces, including more welcoming approaches to differing physical abilities, ages, and genders. 

One of the case studies, Jen Yeunho Kimjang, indicates that Kimjang’s work, IGong demonstrates how new media can reflect art and expand beyond the male gaze to create new types of work and perspectives. It is difficult to change all systems and operations within a few years. Therefore, Kimjang continuously has been accumulated these alternative viewpoints for the last 20 years. My research investigated Kimjang’s three works: the Seoul International New Media Festival: Gender x Nation, the Feminism Video Activist Biennale, and the Feminist Media Artist Workshop. The social justice approach of Kimjang prioritizes changing the male gaze to get more voices into the new media art world.

With the invention of 16mm and 8mm cameras, there has been an increase in artworks in the United States containing more women’s perspectives and gazes through video art. This movement continues into new media art. It means that this art form's main subject has changed, and the art world has changed in such a way that everyone can engage in new media art and create it.[6] Kimjang argues the audience should consider their own presentation and voice in a society that isolates and excludes through the gaze of the adult non-disabled heterosexual male in new media digital culture.

Kimjang’s work is committed to introducing new media artworks that explore innovative applications and inventive ways of rethinking art and culture while discovering and encouraging artists with the desire to imagine that anybody can become a new media artist, even children. Hence, artwork produced using an iPhone or tablet, not expensive tools, is also included in the Seoul International New Media Festival.

There are many examples of contemporary exhibitions and programs dealing with social issues of discrimination and the rights of marginalized groups of people. However, there are not yet many exhibitions and programs that employ new media art to share, highlight, and uncover suppressed voices in a given society.  Like my case studies, some curators and directors expand the silence of marginalized groups of people.  Professionals reframe or replace Euro-centric discourses and structures with alternative points of view.  However, societal and funding barriers still provide challenges to realizing the potential of this medium, and further work is needed.  Despite that, new media art offers an impressively effective possibility to take both audience engagement and social discourse to a new level in creative spaces, and its potential is just beginning to be uncovered.

As Nathalie Boseul Shin stated, the planning of the exhibition should be a mid-to-long-term project to speak about social connections through exhibitions.[7] Therefore, she feels that she is more like a producer who plays a part in changing the existing works of art and shaping the directions of artists' new work. Directors of new media art organizations and new media art curators often act as producers because they have reached the stage that they have taken part in the exhibition's production.  New media art curators and directors perform as collaborators of the community, rather than collectors, caretakers, and conservators.[8] Curators also mediate the artwork's production and display in physical space between artists and museums, requiring deep collaboration between artists and curators.

Today, the role of directors and curators has expanded to focus on visions, questions, and challenges faced today and, in the future, bring awareness to marginalized and silenced voices by highlighting injustices and inequalities. For both positive and negative purposes, new media art may be used, and the audiences can evoke both positive and negative feelings. Therefore, curators and directors play crucial roles as producers, catalysts, bridge-builders, commissioners, filters, community communicators, collaborators, and activists in interpreting new media artwork.  The emotions and actions of their work can provoke a very effective tool for social justice and activism.

Further Research

Research around social justice and activism in museums and arts organizations through new media art exhibitions will continue developing and progressing.  Scholarly research thus far offers an important starting point for further study, and the inquiries and considerations presented in this study are but a stepping stone along the path to realizing the full potential of new media art in institutions and society. 

New media art exhibitions and programs encouraging social justice and activism have both obstacles and opportunities before them in terms of future growth.  As new media art curator Nathalie Boseul Shin argues, there is a need for ongoing initiatives that address social and activist issues, rather than just encouraging audiences to consume the works of art and the technologies that create them.^[9] In addition, Jen Yeunho Kimjang argues that ongoing financial support and the development of a national market are urgently needed steps.^[10]  She argues that artists cannot exclusively produce social issue artwork, but a more balanced approach is needed in order to create a market and cultural ecosystem for the sale of new media artwork.  Further research into how and where these types of changes might occur and what possible solutions can be proposed to address situations impeding their implementation would be very useful to the field.

In addition, as Beryl Graham stated, although new media makes things more accessible to more people, there is still a “digital divide” ^[11] for many people, which limits both organizations’ and individuals’ abilities to access and procure such exhibits.  These types of challenges must be researched and better understood before any meaningful resolution to them can be achieved.  Such research should also include a deeper analysis of the potentially negative effects of new media artworks and the risks associated with it being employed for extremist political or ethical ideologies.  These types of issues might be better navigated by curators and directors after more careful studies of the medium have been conducted.

Lastly, in order to study in more detail whether an exhibition using new media art has the power to realize social justice and activism, various reports such as the Australian Research Council report on Identity: yours, mine, and oursexhibitions are needed. Suggestions for future research are examining and evaluating the feasibility and effectiveness of increasing acceptance of racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity through new media art exhibitions that convey contemporary issues. Furthermore, in the future, there will be more evaluations of new media art exhibitions that question masculinity or Euro-U.S.-centrism and engage in contemporary discourses about gender and LGBTQ+ issues, racism, and sexuality, and the rights of marginalized groups. In this way, further researchers will lead and make concrete more opportunities to expand this research more deeply.

[1]. Robert R. Janes and Richard Sandell, “Posterity Has Arrived,” in, “Museum Activism (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, 2019),” pp. 1-21.

[2]. Jessica Walton and Yin Paradies, “Identity: Yours, Mine, Ours Exhibition Evaluation Report” (Museum Victoria, April 2106), https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5835166203596ef406c87231/t/59a7544b6f4ca36321b263b0/1504138338606/Identity-Exhibition-ARC-Evaluation-Report-Museum-Victoria-2016.pdf, 7.

[3]. Maya McFadzean et al., “Inside out/Outside In,” in Museum Activism (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, 2019), pp. 256-267.

[4]. La France, Samuel. Zoom Interview with the author, September 21, 2020.

[5]. Kyungyoon Ho, “[Site+People] Shin Boseul Total Museum of Art Curator,” Daljin Kim Art Institute[Site+People] Shin Boseul Total Museum of Art Curator, accessed July 20, 2020, http://www.daljin.com/column/6090.

[6]. Kimjang, Jen Yeunho. Personal Interview with the author, Seoul, South Korea, August 7, 2020.

[7]. Shin, Nathalie Boseul. Personal Interview with the author, Seoul, South Korea, August 17, 2020.

[8]. Christiane Paul and Sarah Cook, “Immateriality and Its Discontents: An Overview of Main Models and Issues for Curating New Media,” in New Media in the White Cube and Beyond: Curatorial Models for Digital Art (CA: University of California Press, 2008), 32.

[9]. Ibid.

[10]. Ibid.

[11]. Graham, Beryl. Zoom Interview with the author, September 3, 2020.