Information exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art

This landmark Conceptual art exhibition reinforced the dematerialization of the art object. Kynaston McShine curated Information in consultation with art historian and critic Lucy Lippard. The show examined how culture had been altered by “communications systems such as television and film and by increased mobility.” Conceptual art defined the show. Artists employed language and rules to encourage participation. The works consisted of photographs, videos and ideas, representing “the sense of mobility and change that pervades their time.“ This anticipated the coming rise of digital mass media art. The show was “interested in ways of rapidly exchanging ideas, rather than embalming the idea in an 'object'" for visual pleasure, according to McShine. It was a crucial moment in the six year period (1966-1972) identified by Lucy Lippard as the dematerialization of the art object in her watershed book, Six Years: the Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972. 150 artists from 15 countries participated, including Sol LeWitt, On Kawara, Joseph Beuys and Yoko Ono. The role of Information in the dematerialization of the art object was critical to the development of digital art. For McShine, the artwork wasn’t necessarily a physical object. It was "simply a method of distributing the visual information that interests the artist.”