The Guggenheim and LG announced the LG Guggenheim Art and Technology Initiative

Earlier this month, during the Guggenheim’s annual Young Collectors Council (YCC) Party, the Guggenheim and LG announced the LG Guggenheim Art and Technology Initiative, a five-year, multifaceted collaboration to research, honor and promote artists working at the intersection of art and technology. The initiative is unique in its areas of concentration and approach and is an unprecedented investment in technology as an artistic medium. The Guggenheim envisions the initiative will allow the museum to broaden its research and presentation of this innovative field.

adf-web-magazine-lg-and-guggenheim

The multi-year initiative establishes the LG Guggenheim Award, which will be administered by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and will recognize one artist annual for their groundbreaking achievements in technology-based art. The award will be juried by an international panel of distinguished museum directors, curators, scholars, and other arts professionals, with the selected artist receiving an unrestricted honorarium of $100,000. The first recipient of the LG Guggenheim Award will be announced at the YCC Party in spring 2023.

As part of the initiative, LG Display will sponsor the Guggenheim’s Young Collectors Council Party through 2027. The YCC is a group of young professionals dedicated to supporting the museum’s landmark building, exhibitions, collection, and educational programs, and the YCC Party aims to raise funds for the museum’s acquisitions of artwork. By sponsoring the party, the LG Guggenheim Art and Technology Initiative will provide essential support of the museum’s mission to collect, preserve, and interpret the art of our time, expanding the YCC’s long-standing history of supporting emerging artists. This year, the YCC Party featured atmospheric club designs by artists Jacolby Satterwhite and Tourmaline and transparent OLED displays, with performances by Perfume Genius and Maya Margarita, as well as DJ sets by TT Britt. Future parties will feature additional engagements by rising artists who will incorporate LG OLED technology into their activations of the Guggenheim’s iconic, Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building.

As part of the initiative, the Guggenheim will appoint an LG Electronics Assistant Curator to develop and support the Guggenheim’s engagement with digital and technology-based art. This newly-created, research-based position will be under the supervision of senior curatorial staff and will promote a deeper understanding of the ways contemporary artists are engaging with computer-based hardware, the internet, augmented and virtual reality software, artificial intelligence, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the metaverse, and other burgeoning technologies. In addition to managing the LG Guggenheim Award process, the LG Electronics Assistant Curator will work with the museum’s education, conservation, and communications departments to develop scholarship and other public-facing content that will support and enhance the initiative.

The Guggenheim’s Deputy Director and Chief Curator Naomi Beckwith commented on the newly-established initiative: “We are especially proud to be partnering with LG on this initiative, which builds on the Guggenheim’s rich history of innovative, artist-driven programs. By promoting scholarship and public engagement, the LG Guggenheim initiative will provide essential support to the visionary artists who inspire new understanding of how technology shapes and is shaped by society.”

The LG Guggenheim Art and Technology Initiative builds on the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s history of global collaborations, reflected in its international network of museums and programs. Through the sustained support of a long term partnership with the Guggenheim, LG hopes to help usher in a new wave of digital creativity, combining cutting edge solutions from LG Electronics and LG Display with the artistic innovations of the Guggenheim. While describing the partnership between LG and the Guggenheim, the Head of LG Corp’s Brand Management Seol Park announced, “We are thrilled to collaborate with the Guggenheim Museum to support creativity in the digital age. LG’s commitment to realizing technologies that touch people’s lives is very much in line with the Guggenheim’s dedication to highlight era-defining artistic expressions. We look forward to making available our exclusive innovations to the creative community and helping define the role of technology in this century as the enabling medium for human expressions and experiences.”

You can learn more about the Guggenheim’s initiatives Here.