Yet for the modern museum, new media often present a variety of challenges, says art historian Ursula Frohne, Ph.D., senior curator at the ZKM/Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany's leading new media research center and museum. These can range from practical concerns of collecting, storage and display to philosophical debates over the nature of art and its engagement with the viewer.

Frohne will present some of her ideas Feb. 7 in a lecture -- "Exhibiting New Media" -- for the University's Visual Arts and Design Center and the Saint Louis Art Museum's Contemporary Art Society. The talk is free and open to the public and takes place at 7 p.m. in Steinberg Auditorium in Steinberg Hall. A reception will follow.

"The 21st century art museum has become a hybridized medium," Frohne said. "With new technologies invading the exhibition space of the 'white cube,' the art gallery increasingly turns into a 'black box,' where the aesthetic experience resonates pre-modern aspects of the 'wonder chamber' and the spectacle.

"The emergence of new media and interactive artworks constitutes a growing challenge to the museum to experiment with new exhibition and collecting methods in order to respond to the perceptive and participatory concepts of an 'electronic avant-garde.'"

Frohne has written widely on new media for ZKM publications, including the essay "Reality Bytes: Media Images Between Fact and Fake" in the book You Never Know the Whole Story (2000). In the United States, she recently edited a special section of the College Art Association's Art Journal titled "Crossing Boundaries in Cyberspace? The Politics of 'Body' and 'Language' After the Emergence of New Media."

Currently a visiting scholar at The Pembroke Center at Brown University, Frohne recently was appointment professor of art and art history at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the International University in Bremen. She previously has served at The American Council for the Learned Societies, New York, and The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Santa Monica, Calif. From 1988-1995, she taught at the Freie UniversitŠt, Berlin.