Recently Chinese contemporary art collectors Sylvain and Dominique Levy sent out announcements for the opening of their new dsl collection museum. What makes this event unique at the tail end of a mushrooming museum development era is the absence of real buildings and galleries. Instead, all of the artwork is shown in a 3-D virtual space accessed through the internet. It seems that art consumption, like music and print publications before it, is making the leap from real time to screen time. While viewing art online is hardly a new concept, the advent of the dsl museum raises the question of how art should be presented in the future and how undefined our use of the term museum can be.

With the intention of using art to teach a global public eager to learn about China, in 2005 the Levys began amassing an impressive collection of Chinese contemporary art that includes both star artists, such as Zhang Huan, and lesser-known younger artists. Hitching onto contemporary society’s fascination with blogs, YouTube and social media sites, the pioneering duo employed the internet to generate international buzz and facilitate aesthetic exchange. In addition to creating a resource based website relating to the collection’s 150 artworks, Sylvain Levy went so far as to release a YouTube video to spark interest (YouTube link: [youtube.com]). He took a futher step last year when Levy hired a team of computer wizzes and Chinese contemporary art experts to create an online site intended to present his collection in a virtual museum space. Voila! Launched in January 2010, his dream has been fulfilled (collection link: [3d.eeart.com]).

The museum’s introduction states that “Online gaming and art are happily married in this extra-dimensional, two storey museum. As art works become de-materialized the audience becomes avatars, losing themselves in this labyrinthine cabinet…It is an open, resourceful register of contemporary Chinese art that allows the viewer to exercise his own tastes and criteria.” Essentially, the online site mirrors user-selective web browsing.

Technically the website is fun to play with, if not rudimentary compared to today’s razzle-dazzle Playstation games and 3-D films. After loading the site, the visitor has the choice of entering the Main Hall, the Video Room, the Art Archive and more. Arrow keys glide the visitor through galleries filled with works and a simple click on an artwork’s label prompts a short introduction about the work transmitted through a Star Wars’ C-3PO-esque voice. Objects on exhibition will rotate, much like the dynamic shifting of the collection itself.

Showcasing the dsl collection in a dot-com format is an interesting foray into online media that should be applauded. Scholars and art aficionados would have a much easier time digging up research if collectors took the time to post their works and resources online. The web-links and text resources on Chinese contemporary art included on the Levys’ site are especially constructive in a field whose Mandarin language is anathema to non-native speakers. That being said, there is one area where the dsl Museum should be taken to task – the use of the term museum.
In recent years many collectors have dusted off artworks squirreled away in warehouses and offered them up to the public in self-organized museums, the Kent and Vicky Logan Museum in Vail, CO (which includes numerous Chinese contemporary artworks), the Rubell Collection in Miami or Wal-Mart heiress Alice L. Walton’s Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas are some such examples. These are good and beneficial acts, as it is the public who stands to gain. That being said, we must remain vigilant to ensure that collectors don’t view online platforms as a new means to boost the financial value of their art pieces. Last year the art world was in a tizzy over the New Museum’s agreement to exhibit the personal collection of Dakis Joannou, a trustee of the museum. If online forums such as the dsl Museum wish to sustain legitimacy, they need to make sure that this kind of self-promotion doesn’t enter their structure.

But where does an online museum fall amidst this new age noblesse oblige? In an essay regarding museums and the public trust, John Walsh, former Director of Los Angeles’ J. Paul Getty Museum, claims, “In an art museum the key function, the greatest and most valuable thing it can do, is give individual visitors a profound experience of works of art.” To back up this point, he goes on to mention a unique psychological condition, Stendhal Syndrome. Diagnosed in 1989, the term Stendhal Syndrome is used to describe certain individuals’ intense emotional reaction to works of art that they had imagined for many years and finally have the opportunity to view in person. (For a deeper look, check out the book Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings by art critic James Elkins). Call it hokey, but it I like to think that there are a few of us who still believe in Stendhal Syndrome, or rather in the power of artworks to change a person irrevocably.

For those individuals seeking that emotional transformation elicited by a traditional museum-going experience, perusing the online dsl museum strikes one as sterile and false. Art is a creative process with a substantive end product, even if conceptual in appearance, isn’t it? At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon unwilling to keep up with the times, artworks have tactility and form that cannot possibly translate into the two-dimensionality of the World Wide Web. Take Impressionist painting for example. Could one truly understand the significance of Monet’s revolutionary brushstroke in pixels? Hardly.

As the art world keeps up with technology it is exciting to think that online resources offer exciting new modes of presentation and with them new means of understanding and interpreting art. That being said, perhaps it would be best to maintain the sanctity of the old-fashioned term museum by calling the Levys’ venture an online database or archive. Keeping this in mind, let the mouse clicking begin!