The Story that Never Ends

CryptoPunks Featured in New Exhibition at ZKM

ZKM | Center for Art and Media has always been ahead of its time. They were the first institution to acquire CryptoPunks as a part of their permanent collection.

Now, four CryptoPunks - #1286, #2554, #2838, & #5449 - hang alongside Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, and Jeffrey Shaw in The Story That Never Ends, a landmark show tracing 70+ years of media art. From generative code to museum walls, Punks take their place in the continuum of digital expression.

The ZKM Collection provides a new insight into its own collection, which, with around 12,000 works, is one of the largest and most important media art collections in the world. Based on the presentation of iconic works and archive material from the ZKM’s holdings, the exhibition not only tells of the interwoven stories of art and technology, but also of the challenges that ephemeral technological media pose for museums around the world.

The Story That Never Ends uses the ZKM’s unique collection to tell more than just the fascinating history of media art. It also highlights the fragility of our electrified and digitalized civilization. The exhibition provides an in-depth insight into the history of art and technology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and shows how history sharpens our view of the present and encourages us to imagine possible futures.

The inclusion of CryptoPunks marks a turning point: generative art and blockchain-native creativity are now undeniably part of that story. The story that, as the show’s title suggests, never ends.