The Digital Non-Visitor

"How do museums turn weak contacts into strong ones? Can they—and should they—adapt their missions to suit the needs of diffuse and distant audiences?" For its issue dedicated to "The Digitized Museum," Art in America invited me and seven other museum specialists—including critic Orit Gat, digital media theorist Lev Manovich, and Sree Sreenavasan, former chief digital officer at the Met (who now holds that title at the City of New York)—to share thinking about "digital non-visitors"—audiences that engage with a cultural institution solely through online means. I chose to write about my work at the Walker Art Center, where we value virtual and actual visitors equally.