The Archival Event: Thinking Electronic Art Via Cornell's Goldsen Archive of New Media Art

Cornell University's Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art is an archival repository and study center with a broad array of international new media art and its documentation. In 2002, I founded the Archive, which I continue to develop and curate in the Cornell Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. The Goldsen Archive profits from this Division's commitment to the public access of its materials and growing interest in digital preservation. The archive is the repository of significant holdings of Internet art, anchored by the Ljubljana Infos 2000 collection, which I curated with Teo Spiller; the collection of CTheory Multimedia, which was produced in the Cornell Library under the curatorial direction of me and Arthur and Marilouise Kroker; the annual competition in new media art administered by National Video Resources with assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation (some fifty sets of dossiers and work samples annually)[1]; as well as the holder of perhaps the world's most extensive collection of art on CDRom, a collection anchored by the CD-Roms from 23 countries in the exhibition Contact Zones: The Art of CD-Rom[2], which I toured internationally from 19992004. To the end of enhancing preservation, for example, we have applied for major grants from the Langlois Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, but have been unsuccessful thus far in making a convincing enough case for the merits of preserving this Archive.