(Originally posted on the Digital Fine Arts Society of New Mexico website.) Thumbs Up from the "PC" Notes by Jim Kraft, edited and forwarded by JD Jarvis July 24, 2003 During the first weekend of May, 2003 the Print Council of America, hosted by the UNM Art Museum and Tamarind Institute met in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Council is composed of elected print professionals, major collectors and curators from around the country. Jim Kraft, a member of the Digital Fine Arts Society of New Mexico, was on hand for the meetings and filed this report to the New Mexico digital fine arts group discussion site on 5/13/03: ...Yes the Print Council showed up in Albuquerque for meetings and studio tours. Some 57 PC members representing New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and other major institutions showed up... From a collector's point of view, it's about aesthetics not media unless the media is suspect or unproven. They don't seem to care what role the computer and printer play so long as whatever finds its way into a collection will last, and they concede that many ink jet/paper combinations have met an undefined yet tangible "baseline." Along with longevity was the concern for a way of validating edition numbers. Typically this has been a matter of trust between artist, printer, and owner, and for the most part the system has worked. Now, however, collectors are finding that documented edition end numbers not being met, so the question what is the true value of those prints actually made. A related question was what is the value of the first editioned prints as opposed to later prints made with improved media and equipment. My answer was that many printers feel obligated to and actually do keep "legacy" printers around to complete their part of the agreement. Again, that's where documentation counts. In fact, curators as a group seem to feel it's OK whatever you do; just write it down. After spending three hours with these people, it seemed that the consensus of the curators and collectors was that digimedia is forever changing the landscape of visual arts. A decline in the number of active, traditional, editioning print shops in all media was bothersome. A century of traditional venues and galleries is being upended, the loss of personal contact between seller and buyer somehow cheapens the process, and, finally, there is the question of ownership--all bothersome. They were also concerned that reproduction rights and distribution rights are no-longer clearly defined, and this creates territorial issues. The rallying cry was something like "watermarks on everything." Then there was the concern about forgery. Not new. Who's training knowledgeable conservators? Appropriate question. Group A says, "make a new print" and group B says, "no, repair the original like the good old days." What I found kind of new was an admission of fear that one day, when everybody is an artist and everybody makes prints of whatever they want whenever/wherever they want in quantities rivaling wall paper--words like art and artist and gallery will no longer have meaning. Visit the Digital Fine Arts Society of New Mexico website at: www.dfasnm.org and the Print Council of America at: www.printcouncil.org. # # # For other Digital Acceptance stories on this site, click here. Home | About Us | Advertise | Contact Us News & Reviews | How-To's | Resources © 2002-2004 Harald Johnson Communications. All rights reserved.