When Memes Meet Art: “Two Decades of Memes” at the Museum of the Moving Image
Featuring Nyan Cat.
The front door of the Museum of the Moving Image reflected the pleasant afternoon light in Astoria, Queens. Home to original movie props and excerpts of experimental film, on Sept. 13 through 15 it housed Know Your Meme’s exhibition and forum “Two Decades of Memes.”
The exhibition started with still images of memes since 1998, starting with Zero Wing’s “All your base are belong to us” and ending with 2018’s “Expanding Brain” were hung in the exhibition space. On the right was the forum space where panels were hosted by social media executives, experts, journalists and meme creators. Subjects from memes and mental health, to memes in advertising, to the politics of memes were discussed among experts and museum-goers from 1-5 p.m. both days.
The meme exhibition was small, but served as a good capsule of the most popular and recognizable memes from the last 20 years. There was a timeline on the floor under the images, with the oldest near the entrance to the space and the newest at the far corner. On the right wall of the space was a video that went into more depth of the history of memes. Around the corner were three blank canvases that had memes projected onto them at set intervals. Some I was surprised to see, thinking that they were too obscure or nerdy to be displayed at a museum exhibition.
Though the website for the Museum called for an RSVP if visitors wanted to attend the forums, the forums themselves were small but had plenty of room. Casual but important conversations aimed to ask and answer, “What are the role of memes in our society, and how do they affect our lives on and off the internet?”
“It’s been exciting to be at a forum on art and culture, and to take things from the time we spend on the internet to try and understand the world,” Peter Slattery, social editor at VICE and a host of the panel “Metameme” (and former NYU Local city editor) told Local. “Memes are like lore in our society, and the role they play is crucial.”
