Jennifer and Kevin McCoy: Public Key / Private Key

Jennifer and Kevin McCoy’s Public Key/Private Key explores museums’ ownership of artworks and the role of donors in building collections. For the project, the artists donated an original 16mm film to the Whitney Museum of American Art Special Collection on behalf of the public. Visitors to the project page could register their names and explain why they wanted to become a donor; fifty were chosen based on the originality of their submission.

The acquisition of an artwork by a museum typically ends its market life and permanently associates the work’s donor with that gift. With Public Key/Private Key, the artists extended that commercial availability: each donor received a digital certificate that they could transfer, gift, or sell at will. The digital certificates are stored on a blockchain, a technology used in cryptocurrencies to ensure the uniqueness of a transaction. The blockchain becomes a method of recording the work’s provenance, as the list of fifty donors evolves over time with the transfer of the certificates. The donor list was tracked for six months on whitney.org. The McCoys’ film also has a blockchain key embedded in it, and, while it is shown as part of the artport exhibition at the Whitney, the first audience member to take note of and submit the key to the artists will become the fifty-first donor of record. Public Key/Private Key complicates the traditional relationship between museum, benefactor, and audience, turning the public into both viewers and donors, able to trade and transfer their title.

The original fifty donors for Public Key/Private Key were recorded through November 4, 2019.