As a museum professional who has spent her career making choices about what works of art to acquire and preserve for future generations and as someone who takes great joy in handling and caring for objects, I wondered what threads ran from this digital archive through to more traditional archives and libraries. If I had sleepless nights wondering how to best protect a work of art for posterity, how was the Internet Archive going to ensure that its vast data was going to survive for millennia to come?
Before I knew what I was doing, I heard myself telling Brewster that I would love to do an exhibition about the Internet Archive. I don’t think he or I fully registered what I was saying. That would take more time.
This curatorial challenge brewed in my mind. The whatsapp lead more I thought about it, the more I thought an exploration of the past, present and future of archives and libraries and the basic human desire to preserve knowledge for future generations would be a perfect topic for an exhibition in my university art gallery. I knew Nuala’s series could serve as the core artistic and humanizing element for such a show, but I wondered how I would be able to convey these ideas and questions in an accessible and interesting way, how to make this invisible digital world visible? And turning the tables—if Brewster had brought art into the world of technology with his commission of the Internet Archivists series, how could I bring technology into the artistic realm?
A second time about a year later with a proposal, he thought I was crazy. He has said it was as if I had told him I wanted to do “The Internet Archive, The Musical.” A few conversations and months later, he agreed to let me run with the idea.
I have to admit, at times, I too wondered if I was crazy. I wrestled with devising ways to visibly convey the Archive’s unfathomable vastness while also trying to spotlight the diverse aspects of the Archive through hands-on displays.