A Roundtable: Curatorial Perspectives on Collecting Time-based Media Art

This chapter focuses on how curators are becoming more closely connected and involved in preservation practice, particularly when it involves time-based media artworks. While this happens at various stages, from production to exhibition and collecting, the conversation was aimed at the acquisition process and collection practice of time-based media art. The chapter presents a summary of the discussion focusing on some of the key commonalities, such as the need for technical and curatorial knowledge, the usefulness and obstructions of standardization, the benefits of collaboration, and the potentialities of shared and distributed networks of knowledge and care. The diversity of documentation strategies emphasizes how time-based media is changing the museum practice in which the traditional functions of curator and conservator are shifting, as the care of an artwork is not only about repairing or even envisioning future change, but also about following and documenting its evolving “collection life”.