Browser as Gallery: Rhizome Net Art at 30 and WEBSITES WEBSITES WEBSITES!

Rhizome net art is marking 30 years with a program that treats the website itself as the artwork: WEBSITES WEBSITES WEBSITES! (WWW!) ran September 21–27, 2026 at New Int. Picture Company, 39 Great Jones Street, New York, with an online exhibition at websiteswebsiteswebsites.net, and a benefit on September 23, 2026 at Capitale honoring Mohawk artist Skawennati and Art Blocks founder Erick Calderon. For NFT creators and collectors, the through-line is clear—browser-native work, institutional preservation (ArtBase, Emulation-as-a-Service), and why “the site is the piece” still matters after PFPs and marketplace apps.

What WWW! put on view

Rhizome partnered with ARTXCODE on WWW!, curated by Sofia Garcia of ARTXCODE and Vienna Kim and Benoit Palop of LAN Party. Rhizome’s August 24 announcement framed the show as a celebration of the website as a site of experimentation, identity, and autonomy—pairing net-art pioneers with contemporary digital artists.

In the gallery, live websites were installed on varied hardware so visitors encountered each piece as a physical browser experience. Online, the same exhibition splits into four thematic paths: Anarchy, Abstraction, Poetic Computing, and Ghosts. Works were available for acquisition in person or via Fellowship, with proceeds supporting Rhizome’s work as a memory institution for digital art.

Rhizome’s featured roster includes Vuk Ćosić, Damjanski, Molly Soda, Lorna Mills, Jan Robert Leegte, 0xfff, Rafaël Rozendaal, Kim Asendorf, Mika Ben Amar, LIA, SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY, Nolen Royalty, Maya Man, Chia Amisola, Petra Cortright, Auriea Harvey, EXONEMO, Luke Shannon, Simon Denny, and others named on the official announcement. The online exhibition site lists twenty artists without claiming a definitive history of net art—exactly the point for NFT Culture readers tired of “first ever” marketing.

Why the benefit meters for generative NFT culture

The September 23 benefit at Capitale (130 Bowery; 6:30 PM–12 AM; dress code “Plant”) honored two artists Rhizome says are “already decades ahead of their time.” Skawennati—whose CyberPowWow (1997) was an early major online exhibition of Indigenous artists and was restored by Rhizome in 2022—stands for net-native community and long-horizon virtual practice. Erick Calderon, who founded Art Blocks in 2020 with The Chromie Squiggle, is framed as an advocate for generative digital art’s ways of experiencing, preserving, creating, and collecting work on the blockchain.

That pairing is the non-obvious bridge. Institutional rhizome net art preservation and on-chain generative culture are not separate scenes—they share the same hard problems: how a work survives when browsers, plugins, and platforms change, and how collectors experience living software rather than a JPEG thumbnail. If you track Art Blocks as community infrastructure, our Art Blocks Marfa Weekend 2026 guide is the sibling that puts Calderon’s desert gathering next to this New York institutional room.

ArtBase, Emulation-as-a-Service, and why provenance isn’t only a token

Rhizome describes itself as a memory institution for digital art. Its ArtBase is a public archive of more than 2,200 born-digital works—net art, software, code, websites, moving image, games, and browser-based pieces—per Rhizome’s own About materials and anniversary coverage. Since 2015, a core preservation investment has been Emulation-as-a-Service: running legacy software environments so older works can be experienced in a contemporary browser rather than rewritten into whatever stack is fashionable this year. Rhizome’s preservation services page also documents Conifer/Webrecorder-style network capture and gallery/offline access for CD-ROM and software art.

For collectors, that is a different provenance stack than a marketplace listing. Tokens can prove ownership of a pointer; institutions like Rhizome keep asking whether the experience of the work still boots. After platform wind-downs and chain-level risk, that question is not academic—see our coverage of SuperRare Unfinished Past on long-horizon collector responsibility, and Abstract’s chain shutdown on infrastructure below the mint page. Browse more of this beat under our NFT events coverage.

What NFT creators and collectors can take from WWW!

For creators: WWW!’s Abstraction theme explicitly links web-native generative visuals—sites as vitrines anyone with a connection can open—to the political problem of black-boxed platforms. Shipping a URL that is the artwork, not a redirect into a feed, is still a radical distribution choice. Poetic Computing’s hand-coded, personal web ethos rhymes with artists who publish outside Discord-gatekept drops. Ghosts names the unease of bot-saturated netspace—useful context if your practice assumes a human audience.

For collectors: Ask what you are buying when you buy “digital art.” Is the site the piece? Can it be exhibited offline on hardware? Is there an institutional path to keep it runnable in ten years? Rhizome’s benefit and ArtBase relaunch materials argue that memory work is part of the culture, not a museum afterthought. For more gatherings and digital-art infrastructure, keep reading our NFT news and generative art sections.

Quick facts (verified)

• Exhibition: WEBSITES WEBSITES WEBSITES! (WWW!), Sep 21–27, 2026, New Int. Picture Company, 39 Great Jones St, NYC + online.
• Partners / curators: Rhizome + ARTXCODE; curated by Sofia Garcia (ARTXCODE) and Vienna Kim & Benoit Palop (LAN Party).
• Acquisitions: In person or via Fellowship; proceeds benefit Rhizome.
• Benefit: Sep 23, 2026, Capitale, 130 Bowery; honoring Skawennati and Erick Calderon.
• ArtBase: More than 2,200 born-digital works; Emulation-as-a-Service for legacy environments (Rhizome primary materials).

Sources

• Rhizome — WEBSITES WEBSITES WEBSITES! announcement
• websiteswebsiteswebsites.net — online exhibition themes and works
• Rhizome — 30 Years of Rhizome.org (benefit, honorees)
• New Museum — WWW! Opening Reception
• Rhizome Preservation Services
• FAD Magazine — Rhizome at 30 (ArtBase 2,200+ / EaaS corroboration; image credits)
• Fellowship — WWW! exhibition