Conceptual & Intermedia Arts Online (Project CIAO) is a collaborative project to create networked access to educational and scholarly material on the broad theme of conceptual and other non-traditional intermedia art such as digital art, performance art, installation works, artist books, and correspondence works.

CIAO proposes to:

1. develop a searchable, accessible and educational knowledge-base dedicated to conceptual & intermedia art as represented by the collections and scholarship contributed by project partners
2. explore a model by which museums and organizations can use technological standards to create lasting, precise, and internetworked access to collections of any type. This project will use conceptual art as a starting point for reasons outlined below.

Conceptual and other non-traditional art, while a subject of central concern to twentieth-century art history and culture, presents problems of access that impede its use by scholars and students, and its exposure to the general public. While there may be literature on and exhibitions of contenptual art, collections access is impeded by the ephemeral, documentary, and multi-part, mixed-media nature of many conceptual art works. The works often challenge traditional methods of art description and cataloging. Since access to collections promotes new scholarship and learning, and since conceptual art represents some of the most compelling and significant artistsic creation of the modern era, it is eminently worthwhile to improve access to these under-utilized cultural resources.

Partners of CIAO

• Guggenheim Museum
• Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive, University of California
• Alternative Traditions in the Contemporary Arts, University of IOWA
• The Walker Art Center
• The Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College
• Franklin Furnace Archive
• National Gallery of Canada
• Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities
• Tate Gallery, London
• Electronic Cafe
• Block Museum, Northwestern University
• Anthology Film Archives
• Museo de Arte Contemporanea, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil
• The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
• Rhizome.org
• The Performance Art Festival + Archives

One of the new projects of CIAO is Archiving the Avant Garde: Documenting and Preserving Variable Media Art. Follow this link for more information.