New Media, Modern Twist

The Museum of Modern Art announced yesterday that it had created a new curatorial department to focus exclusively on the growing number of contemporary artworks that use sound and moving images in gallery installations. The media department, once part of the department of film and media, will deal with works that use a wide range of modern technology, from video and digital imagery to Internet-based art and sound-only pieces, said Klaus Biesenbach, who was named chief curator of the new department. Mr. Biesenbach, who has been a MoMA curator since 2004 and the chief curator of P.S. 1, the museum’s Queens affiliate, since 2002, said that works relying on media techniques and ideas of conveying motion and time had become much more prominent over the last two decades at international art fairs and exhibitions. “And it’s even more visible now,” he said. “I think artistic practice is evolving, and so museums are evolving as well.” The creation of the new department brings the number of curatorial departments at the museum to seven. The other six are architecture and design, drawings, film, painting and sculpture, photography, and prints and illustrated books.