On Thursday, September 13, from 6-9 p.m., the San Francisco Art Institute hosts an opening reception for Will Brown: Ether, a new exhibition developed in collaboration with the artist collective Will Brown. Collective members are Lindsey White, Jordan Stein, and David Kasprzak. Will Brown: Ether may be seen Wednesdays through Saturdays from 11 am to 6 pm in the Walter + McBean Galleries on the Art Institute’s Chestnut Street Campus. It runs through November 10, 2018.
The Art Institute writes:
In 1986, San Francisco Art Institute sold the collection of Eadweard Muybridge film and ephemera to finance the creation of what is now the New Genres department. This speculative maneuver wagered the future of media against the history and foundations of the moving image. In a similar speculative action, this fall San Francisco Art Institute presents a project in which the artistic collective Will Brown invests their exhibition budget in Ethereum, a digital cryptocurrency.
The value of the Ether investment will be monitored and made visible by an accompanying public mobile application that controls various environmental elements inside the gallery based on the currency’s micro-fluctuations. Each year, Will Brown will withdraw any profits above the initial investment and direct them into a student or faculty project, an unmediated re-investment in the artistic mission of the school.