The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has started a new initiative to
collect Web sites.  Aaron Betsky,  curator of architecture and design,
asked the creators of ada 'web, Atlas, and Funnel to donate portions of
their work.

According to a recent article by Susan Kuchinskas on the wired.com Web site:

       "SFMOMA is not the first museum to acquire digital art, but it is the
       first museum to collect Web sites as samples of design, and its
       approach raises important issues: What does it mean to collect a Web
       site? Is a Web site an example of mass media, or a discrete work of
       art? Is it a living thing that dies if cut off from the noosphere?
       Or is it more comparable to a poster or greeting card, designed to
       be enjoyed, then discarded?"

The article also mentions "The World's First Collaborative Sentence" by
Douglas Davis, which entered the Whitney Museum collection through a
bequest from the late collector Eugene Schwartz who purchased a version of
the work on a floppy disk from the artist. According to director David Ross
the museum is planning to move the project onto their own Web server in the
near future and he wonders if by moving it the museum is creating an
entirely new site-specific work.





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