artport: 25 Years of Whitney Net Art Move Onto the Sixth Floor
Launched online in 2001, the Whitney's artport commissions finally fill the museum's sixth floor. From November 21, more than 100 net art works open as floating browser windows in the galleries.
When the Whitney Museum of American Art opened artport in 2001, it was a commission platform that lived only online. 25 years later, that archive moves onto the sixth floor. artport: A History of Internet Art, organized by Christiane Paul with David Lisbon and Colin Brooks, opens November 21, 2026, and runs through March 28, 2027. Online and in the galleries, it gathers more than 100 works made specifically for the museum's net art program.
The floor plan is built to feel like floating browser windows. The show follows artport's own categories: the Gate Pages of 2001 to 2006, which sent visitors out to artists' sites; the main Commissions, still ongoing; and the timed Sunrise/Sunset series (2009 to 2024) with its successor, On the Hour. Across code, data visualization, nonlinear narrative, worldbuilding, games and AI driven net art, the works track how the internet remade privacy, identity, surveillance and the line between being online and off.
Among the commissions are Auriea Harvey's SITE1 (2023), a scroll driven fly through that turns a machinic wheel into a cave of her own characters; Leo Castañeda's Camoflux Recall Grotto (2026), a browser game of tending cyberflora; and timed pieces by JODI, Rafaël Rozendaal, American Artist, Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Peter Burr and Maya Man. Other names on the roster of commissions include Golan Levin, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Casey Reas, Morehshin Allahyari and Nancy Baker Cahill. A 300 page catalogue edited by Paul is due November 24.
The anniversary also carries a live premiere: Operator's Human Unreadable Act III, staged in the Susan and John Hess Family Theater on November 19, 21 and 22. For a platform that began as pages you opened at home, the survey finally asks you to walk through the windows.
Sources
- artport: A History of Internet Art, Whitney Museum
- artport: A History of Internet Art Opens Nov 21, Whitney press release
- artport Brings 25 Years of Whitney Net Art to the Galleries, Kill Screen, October 27, 2026
- artport: a history of internet art, Yale University Press
- Thumbnail: Screenshots from select artport commissions, courtesy New Information / Whitney Museum of American Art