Thank you for visiting "The Navigator – Live." Today's chat ended at 3 p.m. EST.

Today's guest at 2 p.m. was Maxwell L. Anderson, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Recently, in close association with Intel, the museum launched an extensive Web site to complement the opening of its landmark exhibition "The American Century: Art & Culture 1900-2000." We discussed the Whitney's place in cyberspace, art on the Web and the digitization of museums in general.

"The Navigator – Live" appears each Thursday from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern time. It's a live, moderated discussion offering washingtonpost.com users the chance to talk directly to intriguing and sometimes unusual guests who are shaping the digital world. "The Navigator" appears in The Washington Post print edition every Thursday. You can read past columns by following this link.

Linton Weeks: Greetings and welcome to another spine-tingling episode of Navigator--Live. Let's get right to the questions. Maxwell Anderson, the ball's in your court.

Linton Weeks: Greetings and welcome to the show. Please tell us a little bit about the history of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Maxwell L. Anderson: Hi, Linton. Thanks for having me. First a bit about the Whitney. We were founded in 1930 as a museum devoted to American art and were the first of our kind. Since then we have been the first to show the works of many artists who went on to become the leading lights of their generation. We are committed to building the permanent collection, serving the interests of American artists, being the leading center for research and education in 20th century American art, and being a vital force nationally and in New York City.

Linton Weeks: What is your story? How did you become director of the museum?

Maxwell L. Anderson:
I have been a museum director for a dozen years--most recently in Toronto and in Atlanta before that. After graduating from Dartmouth in 1977 I went on to The Metropolitan Museum of Art as an intern, and worked there while finishing my Ph.D. in fine arts from Harvard in 1981. I was an assistant curator at the Met until 1987. When the Whitney approached me to succeed David Ross, I couldn't refuse.

Linton Weeks: When did you decide to create a Web site for the Whitney? How did you decide what (and what not) to include?

Maxwell L. Anderson: The Whitney had a website when I arrived, but it was a brochure site hosted and authored outside the Museum. I summoned a team of staff members from various departments and delegated to them the features and functionality of the site.

Linton Weeks: Who uses the Web site? And why do they use it?

Maxwell L. Anderson: We're now beginning to examine the data; we launched in April and it's too soon to see any meaningful patterns.

Linton Weeks: So far, your site seems to be relying on exhibits at the museum. Do you foresee a time when your Web site will be a museum unto itself, or will it always serve to drive people into your museum on Madison Avenue in New York?

Maxwell L. Anderson: I think of the Whitney website as a window into the institution in general, and an open door for comments. It should provide a means of experiencing what we offer on site, but this will likely change as videostreaming begins to alter the web to a more balanced offering of metadata and streamed programming.

Huntington, New York: Mr. Anderson,what is your main focus for exhibits: what will appeal to the general public, or avant-garde works that may not be so readily understood ?
-How do you balance these concerns?- Thank you!

Maxwell L. Anderson: Thanks. We have to do both. The balance is, not surprisingly, achieved by insuring that we can afford to provide space for new work by building up our resources in general. The general public can respond to new work, after all--as with our Bill Viola show last year.

Bethesda, MD: Do you think people are more visually literate today than they were 100 years ago? Why or why not? Have photography and TV and computers helped or hindered?

Maxwell L. Anderson: Great question. I would think we are different in our literacy; the pace has picked up so dramatically that associative looking is taking the place of recognition and classification. By that I mean that we can no longer sustain the pace of looking of the time before television. That changes everything; artists and audiences have different attention spans at times, and the issue of the "aura" around an object is no longer the primary issue.

Virginia: "The American Century" is an awfully ambitious project. What do you think works best about such a large show - and what not so well?

Maxwell L. Anderson: I was speaking about that today with a curator from another museum. I likened the exhibit to visiting a permanent collection of another museum; it's vast and bears repeat visits well. But I managed to pull a small group through this morning at a reasonable pace by eliding the experience. If one wants to drink each work in lovingly, it would take quite some time. But our curator Barbara Haskell was as much establishing a framework for understanding American visual traditions as she was championing individual works.

Linton Weeks: What sort of artistic challenges/opportunities are there in the digital world?

Maxwell L. Anderson: Three-dimensional projections into free space will challenge the novelty of the web fairly soon, and I am working with Tony Oursler on exploring what this might bring to digital art.

Washington DC: So if the "aura" as you call it, is no longer the heart of the matter how come people flock to great and profound shows like Cezanne or Van Gogh? And how is it that countless people are still deeply moved by great works of art of the past?

Maxwell L. Anderson: Without telling tales out of school, people who attend major exhibits of monographic exhibitions about single artists often do so because the artist is well known. Thematic shows are often harder to build an audience for.

I'm moved by great works of art of all periods--and I wasn't suggesting that the aura is no longer important; just that a lot of process-oriented artists have chosen to dispense with it as a goal--including Minimalists and others for who the work of art is less contingent on an exchange with a viewer.

Boston MA: With the Millenium Bienniel coming up, I was wondering what the process is to select artists and if there are any plans for digital art-internet art this time around?

Maxwell L. Anderson: Quite a few people would like to know that--but I have to keep it shrouded in secrecy so you'll take the train here to see it.

NY: What was it like working with Intel? Would you do it again?

Maxwell L. Anderson: It was fascinating; I came in on the last 10 months or so of a relationship that David Ross built so successfully with Intel. The meshing of corporate culture with museum culture is interesting precisely because the inherent tension between our ultimate motives is always visible and keeps the discussions on a high level. Intel has been extremely responsive to the features of a collaboration that can insure creative freedom and a rewarding experience for our visitors--both on-site and online. We are working with Intel to augment the websites artmuseum.net and whitney.org, so we welcome you back there.

Dupont Circle, DC: I read the review of The Am. Cent. in the New Yorker and was very surprised at the opinions expressed. It seemed that the reviewer had more problems with the idea of "American-ness" in general than with the exhibit. How do you respond to the criticism that the exhibit lacks focus?

Maxwell L. Anderson: I learned a long time ago not to review reviewers; suffice it to say that it was surprising to many. As far as American identity as a topic, we should all remember that Americans are the first nation built from an amalgam of peoples, language groups, religions, and backgrounds, and we need more than most countries to be self-examining. We've been that way since the Founding Fathers. The show is tightly focused on exploring that rich theme.

Bethesda, MD: In what ways has photography influenced painting in this century? Is this influence different from what it was in the 1800s?

Maxwell L. Anderson: Photography began affecting European artists in the 1860s in earnest; Degas discovered the marvels of cropping after Manet showed him the way. American photographers were in many ways the pioneers of the medium early in the century, and their departure from a pictorial frame of reference--a painterly approach--to a documentary one, is clearly imporant to painters who traveled alonside them, like John Sloan, who thought it altogether appropriate to chronicle the banal back streets of lower middle class New York as photographers had.

Linton Weeks: Oh yeah. We're a little more than half-way through the hour. I want to thank Maxwell Anderson midstream. He's doing a noble job of answering your great questions. I'll take a sip of wild cherry pepsi and you keep the great questions coming.

washington, dc: Do you fear losing audience traffic at your Museum because people will be satisfied with a mediated experience through the Web?

Maxwell L. Anderson: I've actually believed for some time that like glass slides in the 19th century, posters and cartes de visites, the Web will only make the museum and the gallery a more approachable place. So many people stay away from art museums because they're not certain what to expect. So we will be fine--especially when ecommerce reduces the need to go to the mall and we can be the authentic alternative to an ever-more virtual world.

Wash dc: Are you tired of hearing about the millennium?

Maxwell L. Anderson: Not as long as we get through it.

rockville, md: Are there any current aesthetics of digital art and does it have its own vocabulary for discourse? The reason i ask is that when video art came about and there was a need for a framework in which to develop theory and criticism, video theory was paralleled to film, which later proved to be not very accurate. Does digital art have its own theory and theorists yet?

Maxwell L. Anderson: I was just at a Cyberart conference in New York, at which we tried to address how to develop ways of categorizing various expressions of artistic achievement in digital media. They change every few months, it seems, and it may be easier to approach works on their own terms instead of building balsa wood-like theoretical underpinnings.

Dupont Circle, DC: What sorts of problems do you run into with Internet rights? Do you find that lenders and artists are reluctant to have their work up on the Web? Are there any who embrace it?

Maxwell L. Anderson: Interesting question. Have a look at www.amico.org. A group of dozens of museums are working with artists rights organizations to overcome copyright challenges by collaborating in a non-profit project called the Art Museum Image Consortium. We think we may be overcoming the problem for the time being by acknowledging artists' intellectual property rights through a royalty system. At the same time we want to work together to make as much work as possible available from a single source fed by dozens of museums.

New York, NY: What percentage of Americans have a computer advanced enough to actually connect to -and fully make use of- the American Century Web Site?

Maxwell L. Anderson: Not enough. But at public libraries, universities, and increasing numbers of schools and homes, there is adequate bandwidth. We could have waited for the day that the penetration is greater or struck out in an experimental way, and decided on the latter. I am hopeful about how quickly we can see access grow but not overly optimistic it will happen overnight.

Wash, DC: But isn't your Web site much more than slides and postacrds? It's a whole experience unto itself. Can you see the day when the Whitney might acquire a piece of art created specially for the Web? And would't that change the game?

Maxwell L. Anderson: Absolutely. But I am curmudgeonly enough to want the artist to set the agenda: if she or he works in a medium which is poorly represented in today's silent movie phase of the Web, I want to be sensitive to that. If she or he is a Net artist, then the Web is adequate. And we will work with Net artists--but not necessarily to acquire work, since many are loath to sell it.

Arlington, VA: But doesn't there have to be some sort of shared vocabulary so that people can understand each other? If I'm talking about Widgets and you think I mean Gadgets, then you won't be happy with what I deliver, will you?

Maxwell L. Anderson: No question. I just think that by the time we define an artist's oeuvre in digital media, he or she has wriggled loose from the definition. So we'll have to do our best to follow this fast-evolving field, mindful that the delivery systems will ultimately be less onerous and the work will be more commonplace.

Calcutta, India: Do you feel that museum patrons -and americans in general, for that matter- are showing an increasing demand to be entertained? Is art that just sits there enough to keep contemporary Americans interested anymore? Has the Whitney taken any steps to turn up it's showmanship?

Maxwell L. Anderson: Thanks for the question. Entertainment is an all-pervasive force in American society, and artists often choose to work in the crevices between what was once a uniquely American commercial vocabulary and an ever more demanding audience. The history of art is a history of cycles--approaching and retrenching from the beautiful, the politically engaged, the natural or the industrial. And we have to count on the all-pervasive forces of entertainment to drive people to a more rewarding experience shaped by the artist.

Alaska: My question is this ... I want to know how valuable you think a Masters of Museum Studies degree is. My feeling is that it's too general. Thoughts?

Maxwell L. Anderson: I would think it is more icing on the cake. Better to push your way in the door of a museum as a volunteer or intern while studying art and languages.

Washington, DC: The American Century features a large number of documentary photographs. While they are significant documents of their time, do you think they stand up as aesthetic objects in themselves?

Maxwell L. Anderson: Absolutely. I look back on the history of documentary art--from Roman relief sculptures of battles to medieval tapestries to Goya to nineteenth-century realists, and although the medium changes, the posture of detachment is illusory--all of these artists inject their vision through their work.

Brooklyn: What are your feelings about the 3D Van Gogh thing on artmuseum.net? Is this a corruptive influence to the original art - or a fascinating new take? I think it's pretty cool myself and wonder if you have plans to do any more like this ...

Maxwell L. Anderson: Although we had nothing to do with it--it's Intel's project--I am excited about 3d imaging on the web and look forward to it. We will have some glimmerings of this in Part II of the American Century, so come back to the American Century website often!

Washington DC: How will the museum-gallery nexus deal with the literally thousands of new artists who graduate each year and wish to pursue a career as a professional artist?

Maxwell L. Anderson: The issue is a perennial one, and I wish we could do justice to the contributions of American artists across the country and working overseas.

Linton Weeks: All right, folks. That's all there is to it. Thanks so much to Maxwell Anderson for being today's guest. Thanks to the folks at Washingtonpost.com and to all of you who sent in good questions. Sorry we ran out of time. Next week we'll continue our exploration of the Internet. Until then...

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