Today, culture is more dispersed than ever before. The web has broadened both the quantity and kind of information freely available. It has distributed our collective experience across geographic locations; opened up a new set of creative possibilities; and, coextensively, produced a set of challenges. This fall, the New Museum will present “Free,” an exhibition including twenty-three artists working across mediums—including video, installation, sculpture, photography, the internet, and sound —that reflects artistic strategies that have emerged in a radically democratized landscape redefined by the impact of the web. The exhibition makes a case for a newly formed public art that responds to a vastly more connected society whose true openness is still being negotiated. The philosophy of free culture, and its advocacy for open sharing, informs the exhibition, but is not its subject. Instead, the title and featured works present a complex picture of the new freedoms and constraints that underlie our expanded public space. “Free” is curated by Lauren Cornell, Executive Director of Rhizome and New Museum Adjunct Curator.

“Free” is inspired in part by “Dispersion” (2001–), an essay by the artist Seth Price that is available as a free online booklet and will be featured within the exhibition as a large-scale sculptural installation composed of nine panels each imprinted with a page from the original booklet. The essay traces the increased dispersion of culture, by examining how its circulation and reception has changed across mediums from print, to video, and to the web. In light of the way we now experience political events and pop culture, Price questions the viability of public art as we understand it. Price writes: “We should recognize that collective experience is now based on simultaneous private experiences, distributed across the field of media culture, knit together by ongoing debate, publicity, promotion, and discussion. Publicness today has as much to do with sites of production and reproduction as it does with any supposed physical commons, so a popular album could be regarded as a more successful instance of public art than a monument tucked away in an urban plaza.” The works in “Free” alight from Price’s statements to demonstrate and explore the multiple ways artists utilize, appropriate, and reenact material sourced from a distributed public space.

Artists featured in “Free” include Liz Deschenes, Aleksandra Domanovic, Lizzie Fitch, Martijn Hendriks, Joel Holmberg, David Horvitz, Lars Laumann, Andrea Longacre-White, Kristin Lucas, Jill Magid, Hanne Mugaas, Takeshi Murata, Rashaad Newsome, Lisa Oppenheim, Trevor Paglen, Seth Price, Jon Rafman, Clunie Reid, Amanda Ross-Ho, Alexandre Singh, Ryan Trecartin & David Karp, and Harm Van Den Dorpel.

The exhibition catalogue will take the form of a frequently updated web site edited by Ceci Moss, Rhizome Senior Editor, with contributions by Lauren Cornell and guest essayists including author and critic Ed Halter; blogger Joanne McNeil; critic Brian Droitcour; and entrepreneur Caterina Fake, as well as related videos, articles, and artworks.