The Frye Art Museum in Seattle Opens a "#SocialMedium" Exhibition Curated by the Internet

This crowd-sourced exhibition was made possible by over 4,000 people liking photos on social media.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Back in Oct., the Frye Art Museum in Seattle opened an art exhibition that not many people would expect to see at a museum. Titled "#SocialMedium," the exhibition features works that were voted on by over 4,000 people from around the world on the museum's various social media profiles. The paintings are displayed along with icons that show the number of likes and a sample of the comments they received when posted online.

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Over 17,000 votes were cast, and every work of art that Frye Museum posted received at least one vote, so it's fair to say that the crowd-sourcing was a success. Museum director Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker told The Huffington Post that the strength of the exhibition is that it is "truly global." "We have very different perspectives on view than we would have had available to us if, for example, I had curated the show," she added. "Instead we have the knowledge and perspectives of over 4,000 people from very diverse backgrounds."

The inclusions of "like" icons and comments reminds of us another recent exhibition of work that had a dual life both inside the gallery and on the Internet. Richard Prince's "New Portraits" exhibition at Gagosian featured "rephotographs" of Instagram posts with likes and comments by Prince and other users of the platform. Many who visited the gallery, just like those who are visiting the Frye exhibition, took #artselfies with the works and posted them to Instagram and Twitter, completing the cycle and adding to the conversation that the art itself is a comment on.

"#SocialMedium" runs through Jan. 4, 2015. Check out the exhibition page for more information.

[via HuffingtonPost]

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