{"id":90445,"topic":"ai","source":"WPR","title":"Madison art museum debuts new exhibition using generative AI amidst pushback - WPR","url":"https://www.wpr.org/news/madison-art-museum-new-exhibition-generative-ai-pushback","url_hash":"f9d606a5b9b183f7f26a3f1d9e8280a62d1a6c2b","author":"","summary":"Madison art museum debuts new exhibition using generative AI amidst pushback WPR","content":"The curator of a new exhibition in the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is defending the installation’s use of generative artificial intelligence to allow viewers to manipulate digital artwork. More than 900 people have signed an open letter calling to shut down the project due to the project’s AI use.\nThe exhibition “Diffuse Control” by the digital artist Beeple debuted in Madison Saturday. It features 12 synchronized video screens that are fed artwork by the museum’s curator. Viewers can use their phones and a control panel to interact with the art on the screens, modifying and iterating on the art in real time.\nUnderstanding Wisconsin, Together.\nWPR’s “Wisconsin Today” newsletter keeps you connected to the state you love without feeling overwhelmed. No paywall. No agenda. No corporate filter.\nThe choice to show the installation “Diffuse Control” has faced pushback. Local artist Noah Peterson sent an open letter to the museum, arguing that the museum failed to gather explicit consent from artists to feed their work into the exhibition, which uses generative artificial intelligence.\nThe letter also argues that the use of the technology itself is unethical, as the type of AI model used to generate images or video — called a diffusion model — is trained on scraping art without artists’ consent.\nThe letter has garnered more than 900 signatures, with signees describing the choice to show “Diffuse Control” as “disappointing,” “disgusting” and in “poor taste.”\nPaul Baker Prindle is the Gabriele Haberland Director of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and the curator for the new exhibition “Diffuse Control.” He told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” the exhibition touches on big questions around artificial intelligence and new technologies.\n“When I went to go see the work at Beeple’s studio, I found myself asking more and more questions,” Baker Prindle told WPR. “That’s usually an indicator that there’s something there worth talking about.”\nBaker Prindle told WPR about the new exhibition and responded to criticism of the new artwork.\nThe following was edited for clarity and brevity.\nKate Archer Kent: You picked out these images and submitted them into the artist Beeple’s machine that he has created. Tell us how that works, and how these images transform as part of the installation.\nPaul Baker Prindle: Simply put: It is a sculpture that moves. We could call it a kinetic sculpture. It has 12 flat screens. It’s a very seductive object. It has a presence. At times, there is something uncannily religious about it. The way it sits in the space and kind of commands attention, it’s unsettling.\nIt has a computer inside of it and that computer is running a software program. That software program was developed using a wide array of tools and, perhaps controversially, it used AI to help build the program. Then Mike Winkelmann, as the artist Beeple, created a base image inspired by an artwork from our collection, and then visitors can use a control kiosk to manipulate that image. The base image that Mike created is pretty different from the original, and then we can take it even farther.\nIt’s an artwork that really reflects the sort of central terms of Mike’s practice, which are these questions of: How do we work in society? How do we talk to each other? How do we exercise, wield and yield control in social settings? What happens when one person controls the levers, or when multiple people are controlling the levers of decision making?\nIn this artwork, when multiple people try to do it in competition, it goes into what’s called glitch mode, and then it stops doing what you want it to do. So in this way there is a simple kind of surface. But then when you spend time with it and you think about it, it really pushes on a lot of uncomfortable and perhaps unresolved notions that we’re all carrying just by being humans living on this planet.\nKAK: More than 900 people have signed an open letter pushing back on your choice to feature the exhibition. How do you feel seeing the pushback you’ve received on diffuse control?\nPBP: I relate to it as an important part of what we do. It’s not my expectation that everyone be pleased with what we do at a contemporary art museum. If we look at the history of contemporary art museums — looking at the 1990s forward — we look at the culture wars quite frequently. \nContemporary art museums do things that make people upset. I think we have to agree that there’s a special utility for the kind of space that we’ve created. I would argue that, perhaps now more than ever, we need to exercise our skills in talking about things that we don’t like or things that we don’t understand or maybe agree with.\nMy role is to create the space, but I do my best not to speak about my own personal feelings about an artwork, or guide people toward an expected conclusion. That’s not what we do. So the open letter is really a healthy part of what we do. We’ve listened, and I would propose that one can listen and hear, but also still not agree.\nKAK: But talk us through the copyright and consent aspect to this installation. One grievance from the open letter argues that you’re using artwork without the artist’s consent. Can you talk about that?\nPBP: That’s kind of true, and also not.\nThere are three (collections): Two of them are historical material and one is more contemporary. We spoke with everyone we could who still held copyright on the contemporary work — that meant we talked with estate trustees and with the one living artist that’s in the exhibition. Where consent was required by the law, we received it.\nIn my response through press and through our frequently asked questions page, I addressed this one element of the open letter where we’re asked to consider a moral position on fair use and public domain. A lot of the older works that we’re using are part of the public domain.\nPublic domain is such an incredible thing in that, because we can’t know what someone who’s been dead for 500 years or 1,000 years, or 2,000 years would think, we need to agree to certain terms. I think public domain has worked very well. But this situation introduces something new and I think we ought to talk about that.\nKAK: Would you consider forming an AI policy for the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in the future? Is a type of policy like that coming together now?\nPBP: We have informal policies on how we use AI. We write our own original content. We don’t use AI for that. \nBut I think it’s incredibly dangerous to create blanket policies, around artists especially. I want artists to make art and to leave it up to them, and then we make decisions on what we’re going to exhibit based on its relevance.\nKAK: Given the pushback this installation has received, what lessons have you learned about showcasing artwork that uses generative artificial intelligence technology?\nPBP: I think museums are special places where we need to be able to look at these things. I think this artwork and the conversations we’re having about this artwork, I think can inform some of the arguably more impactful issues around AI.\nThe fact is, most Americans, including Wisconsinites, are against the construction of additional data centers. I think we need to understand why and I think we also need to recognize that many of us are already using technology that is using data centers. So whether you’re storing a document in Google Drive or you’re using MyChart, you are using AI. The Adobe Creative Suite has been using AI tools for several years now.\nOne of the calls has been, “We don’t want anything having to do with AI in the museum.” That would be very difficult because most artists, if they’re not using it to create art, they’re using it to create their CVs, they’re using it to answer emails, they’re doing it in all sorts of ways.\nI think that this exhibition has drawn ire, but I think we need to recognize that we’re all in it. I think it’s a pestilence in our society where, in our contemporary moment, we tend to speak about things as if we aren’t in it. I don’t think that that contributes to long-term solution making. I think we don’t have to agree with something to look it in the eye.","image_url":"https://www.wpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/260918_-MMOCAAI04-scaled.jpg","lang":"en","published_at":"2026-09-25T21:06:00+00:00","fetched_at":"2026-09-25T21:15:03+00:00","status":"read","starred":0,"extract_state":"ok","summary_auto":"The curator of a new exhibition in the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is defending the installation’s use of generative artificial intelligence to allow viewers to manipulate digital artwork. 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More than 900 people have signed an open letter calling to shut down the project due to the project’s AI use.\nThe exhibition “Diffuse Control” by the digital artist Beeple debuted in Madison Saturday. It features 12 synchronized video screens that are fed artwork by the museum’s curator. Viewers can use their phones and a control panel to interact with the art on the screens, modifying and iterating on the art in real time.\nUnderstanding Wisconsin, Together.\nWPR’s “Wisconsin Today” newsletter keeps you connected to the state you love without feeling overwhelmed. No paywall. No agenda. No corporate filter.\nThe choice to show the installation “Diffuse Control” has faced pushback. Local artist Noah Peterson sent an open letter to the museum, arguing that the museum failed to gather explicit consent from artists to feed their work into the exhibition, which uses generative artificial intelligence.\nThe letter also argues that the use of the technology itself is unethical, as the type of AI model used to generate images or video — called a diffusion model — is trained on scraping art without artists’ consent.\nThe letter has garnered more than 900 signatures, with signees describing the choice to show “Diffuse Control” as “disappointing,” “disgusting” and in “poor taste.”\nPaul Baker Prindle is the Gabriele Haberland Director of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and the curator for the new exhibition “Diffuse Control.” He told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” the exhibition touches on big questions around artificial intelligence and new technologies.\n“When I went to go see the work at Beeple’s studio, I found myself asking more and more questions,” Baker Prindle told WPR. “That’s usually an indicator that there’s something there worth talking about.”\nBaker Prindle told WPR about the new exhibition and responded to criticism of the new artwork.\nThe following was edited for clarity and brevity.\nKate Archer Kent: You picked out these images and submitted them into the artist Beeple’s machine that he has created. Tell us how that works, and how these images transform as part of the installation.\nPaul Baker Prindle: Simply put: It is a sculpture that moves. We could call it a kinetic sculpture. It has 12 flat screens. It’s a very seductive object. It has a presence. At times, there is something uncannily religious about it. The way it sits in the space and kind of commands attention, it’s unsettling.\nIt has a computer inside of it and that computer is running a software program. That software program was developed using a wide array of tools and, perhaps controversially, it used AI to help build the program. Then Mike Winkelmann, as the artist Beeple, created a base image inspired by an artwork from our collection, and then visitors can use a control kiosk to manipulate that image. The base image that Mike created is pretty different from the original, and then we can take it even farther.\nIt’s an artwork that really reflects the sort of central terms of Mike’s practice, which are these questions of: How do we work in society? How do we talk to each other? How do we exercise, wield and yield control in social settings? What happens when one person controls the levers, or when multiple people are controlling the levers of decision making?\nIn this artwork, when multiple people try to do it in competition, it goes into what’s called glitch mode, and then it stops doing what you want it to do. So in this way there is a simple kind of surface. But then when you spend time with it and you think about it, it really pushes on a lot of uncomfortable and perhaps unresolved notions that we’re all carrying just by being humans living on this planet.\nKAK: More than 900 people have signed an open letter pushing back on your choice to feature the exhibition. How do you feel seeing the pushback you’ve received on diffuse control?\nPBP: I relate to it as an important part of what we do. It’s not my expectation that everyone be pleased with what we do at a contemporary art museum. If we look at the history of contemporary art museums — looking at the 1990s forward — we look at the culture wars quite frequently. \nContemporary art museums do things that make people upset. I think we have to agree that there’s a special utility for the kind of space that we’ve created. I would argue that, perhaps now more than ever, we need to exercise our skills in talking about things that we don’t like or things that we don’t understand or maybe agree with.\nMy role is to create the space, but I do my best not to speak about my own personal feelings about an artwork, or guide people toward an expected conclusion. That’s not what we do. So the open letter is really a healthy part of what we do. We’ve listened, and I would propose that one can listen and hear, but also still not agree.\nKAK: But talk us through the copyright and consent aspect to this installation. One grievance from the open letter argues that you’re using artwork without the artist’s consent. Can you talk about that?\nPBP: That’s kind of true, and also not.\nThere are three (collections): Two of them are historical material and one is more contemporary. We spoke with everyone we could who still held copyright on the contemporary work — that meant we talked with estate trustees and with the one living artist that’s in the exhibition. Where consent was required by the law, we received it.\nIn my response through press and through our frequently asked questions page, I addressed this one element of the open letter where we’re asked to consider a moral position on fair use and public domain. A lot of the older works that we’re using are part of the public domain.\nPublic domain is such an incredible thing in that, because we can’t know what someone who’s been dead for 500 years or 1,000 years, or 2,000 years would think, we need to agree to certain terms. I think public domain has worked very well. But this situation introduces something new and I think we ought to talk about that.\nKAK: Would you consider forming an AI policy for the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in the future? Is a type of policy like that coming together now?\nPBP: We have informal policies on how we use AI. We write our own original content. We don’t use AI for that. \nBut I think it’s incredibly dangerous to create blanket policies, around artists especially. I want artists to make art and to leave it up to them, and then we make decisions on what we’re going to exhibit based on its relevance.\nKAK: Given the pushback this installation has received, what lessons have you learned about showcasing artwork that uses generative artificial intelligence technology?\nPBP: I think museums are special places where we need to be able to look at these things. I think this artwork and the conversations we’re having about this artwork, I think can inform some of the arguably more impactful issues around AI.\nThe fact is, most Americans, including Wisconsinites, are against the construction of additional data centers. I think we need to understand why and I think we also need to recognize that many of us are already using technology that is using data centers. So whether you’re storing a document in Google Drive or you’re using MyChart, you are using AI. The Adobe Creative Suite has been using AI tools for several years now.\nOne of the calls has been, “We don’t want anything having to do with AI in the museum.” That would be very difficult because most artists, if they’re not using it to create art, they’re using it to create their CVs, they’re using it to answer emails, they’re doing it in all sorts of ways.\nI think that this exhibition has drawn ire, but I think we need to recognize that we’re all in it. I think it’s a pestilence in our society where, in our contemporary moment, we tend to speak about things as if we aren’t in it. I don’t think that that contributes to long-term solution making. I think we don’t have to agree with something to look it in the eye.","excerpt":"The curator of a new exhibition in the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is defending the installation’s use of generative artificial intelligence to allow viewers to manipulate digital artwork. More than 900 people have signed an open letter calling to shut down the project due to the project’s AI use.","extraction":{"state":"ok","confidence":0.9,"error":null,"explanation":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 8174 characters.","diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.wpr.org/news/madison-art-museum-new-exhibition-generative-ai-pushback","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 8174 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":8174,"summary_length":305,"usable_text_length":8174,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":8174,"summary_length":305}}},"display_formats":["compact","card","full","digest_section","json"]},"daily_stack_record":{"title":"Madison art museum debuts new exhibition using generative AI amidst pushback - WPR","url":"https://www.wpr.org/news/madison-art-museum-new-exhibition-generative-ai-pushback","summary":"The curator of a new exhibition in the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is defending the installation’s use of generative artificial intelligence to allow viewers to manipulate digital artwork. More than 900 people have signed an open letter calling to shut down the project due to the project’s AI use.","source":"WPR","date":"2026-09-25T21:06:00+00:00","content":"The curator of a new exhibition in the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is defending the installation’s use of generative artificial intelligence to allow viewers to manipulate digital artwork. More than 900 people have signed an open letter calling to shut down the project due to the project’s AI use.\nThe exhibition “Diffuse Control” by the digital artist Beeple debuted in Madison Saturday. It features 12 synchronized video screens that are fed artwork by the museum’s curator. Viewers can use their phones and a control panel to interact with the art on the screens, modifying and iterating on the art in real time.\nUnderstanding Wisconsin, Together.\nWPR’s “Wisconsin Today” newsletter keeps you connected to the state you love without feeling overwhelmed. No paywall. No agenda. No corporate filter.\nThe choice to show the installation “Diffuse Control” has faced pushback. Local artist Noah Peterson sent an open letter to the museum, arguing that the museum failed to gather explicit consent from artists to feed their work into the exhibition, which uses generative artificial intelligence.\nThe letter also argues that the use of the technology itself is unethical, as the type of AI model used to generate images or video — called a diffusion model — is trained on scraping art without artists’ consent.\nThe letter has garnered more than 900 signatures, with signees describing the choice to show “Diffuse Control” as “disappointing,” “disgusting” and in “poor taste.”\nPaul Baker Prindle is the Gabriele Haberland Director of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and the curator for the new exhibition “Diffuse Control.” He told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” the exhibition touches on big questions around artificial intelligence and new technologies.\n“When I went to go see the work at Beeple’s studio, I found myself asking more and more questions,” Baker Prindle told WPR. “That’s usually an indicator that there’s something there worth talking about.”\nBaker Prindle told WPR about the new exhibition and responded to criticism of the new artwork.\nThe following was edited for clarity and brevity.\nKate Archer Kent: You picked out these images and submitted them into the artist Beeple’s machine that he has created. Tell us how that works, and how these images transform as part of the installation.\nPaul Baker Prindle: Simply put: It is a sculpture that moves. We could call it a kinetic sculpture. It has 12 flat screens. It’s a very seductive object. It has a presence. At times, there is something uncannily religious about it. The way it sits in the space and kind of commands attention, it’s unsettling.\nIt has a computer inside of it and that computer is running a software program. That software program was developed using a wide array of tools and, perhaps controversially, it used AI to help build the program. Then Mike Winkelmann, as the artist Beeple, created a base image inspired by an artwork from our collection, and then visitors can use a control kiosk to manipulate that image. The base image that Mike created is pretty different from the original, and then we can take it even farther.\nIt’s an artwork that really reflects the sort of central terms of Mike’s practice, which are these questions of: How do we work in society? How do we talk to each other? How do we exercise, wield and yield control in social settings? What happens when one person controls the levers, or when multiple people are controlling the levers of decision making?\nIn this artwork, when multiple people try to do it in competition, it goes into what’s called glitch mode, and then it stops doing what you want it to do. So in this way there is a simple kind of surface. But then when you spend time with it and you think about it, it really pushes on a lot of uncomfortable and perhaps unresolved notions that we’re all carrying just by being humans living on this planet.\nKAK: More than 900 people have signed an open letter pushing back on your choice to feature the exhibition. How do you feel seeing the pushback you’ve received on diffuse control?\nPBP: I relate to it as an important part of what we do. It’s not my expectation that everyone be pleased with what we do at a contemporary art museum. If we look at the history of contemporary art museums — looking at the 1990s forward — we look at the culture wars quite frequently. \nContemporary art museums do things that make people upset. I think we have to agree that there’s a special utility for the kind of space that we’ve created. I would argue that, perhaps now more than ever, we need to exercise our skills in talking about things that we don’t like or things that we don’t understand or maybe agree with.\nMy role is to create the space, but I do my best not to speak about my own personal feelings about an artwork, or guide people toward an expected conclusion. That’s not what we do. So the open letter is really a healthy part of what we do. We’ve listened, and I would propose that one can listen and hear, but also still not agree.\nKAK: But talk us through the copyright and consent aspect to this installation. One grievance from the open letter argues that you’re using artwork without the artist’s consent. Can you talk about that?\nPBP: That’s kind of true, and also not.\nThere are three (collections): Two of them are historical material and one is more contemporary. We spoke with everyone we could who still held copyright on the contemporary work — that meant we talked with estate trustees and with the one living artist that’s in the exhibition. Where consent was required by the law, we received it.\nIn my response through press and through our frequently asked questions page, I addressed this one element of the open letter where we’re asked to consider a moral position on fair use and public domain. A lot of the older works that we’re using are part of the public domain.\nPublic domain is such an incredible thing in that, because we can’t know what someone who’s been dead for 500 years or 1,000 years, or 2,000 years would think, we need to agree to certain terms. I think public domain has worked very well. But this situation introduces something new and I think we ought to talk about that.\nKAK: Would you consider forming an AI policy for the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in the future? Is a type of policy like that coming together now?\nPBP: We have informal policies on how we use AI. We write our own original content. We don’t use AI for that. \nBut I think it’s incredibly dangerous to create blanket policies, around artists especially. I want artists to make art and to leave it up to them, and then we make decisions on what we’re going to exhibit based on its relevance.\nKAK: Given the pushback this installation has received, what lessons have you learned about showcasing artwork that uses generative artificial intelligence technology?\nPBP: I think museums are special places where we need to be able to look at these things. I think this artwork and the conversations we’re having about this artwork, I think can inform some of the arguably more impactful issues around AI.\nThe fact is, most Americans, including Wisconsinites, are against the construction of additional data centers. I think we need to understand why and I think we also need to recognize that many of us are already using technology that is using data centers. So whether you’re storing a document in Google Drive or you’re using MyChart, you are using AI. The Adobe Creative Suite has been using AI tools for several years now.\nOne of the calls has been, “We don’t want anything having to do with AI in the museum.” That would be very difficult because most artists, if they’re not using it to create art, they’re using it to create their CVs, they’re using it to answer emails, they’re doing it in all sorts of ways.\nI think that this exhibition has drawn ire, but I think we need to recognize that we’re all in it. I think it’s a pestilence in our society where, in our contemporary moment, we tend to speak about things as if we aren’t in it. I don’t think that that contributes to long-term solution making. 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More than 900 people have signed an open letter calling to shut down the project due to the project’s AI use.","full_text":"The curator of a new exhibition in the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is defending the installation’s use of generative artificial intelligence to allow viewers to manipulate digital artwork. More than 900 people have signed an open letter calling to shut down the project due to the project’s AI use.\nThe exhibition “Diffuse Control” by the digital artist Beeple debuted in Madison Saturday. It features 12 synchronized video screens that are fed artwork by the museum’s curator. Viewers can use their phones and a control panel to interact with the art on the screens, modifying and iterating on the art in real time.\nUnderstanding Wisconsin, Together.\nWPR’s “Wisconsin Today” newsletter keeps you connected to the state you love without feeling overwhelmed. No paywall. No agenda. No corporate filter.\nThe choice to show the installation “Diffuse Control” has faced pushback. Local artist Noah Peterson sent an open letter to the museum, arguing that the museum failed to gather explicit consent from artists to feed their work into the exhibition, which uses generative artificial intelligence.\nThe letter also argues that the use of the technology itself is unethical, as the type of AI model used to generate images or video — called a diffusion model — is trained on scraping art without artists’ consent.\nThe letter has garnered more than 900 signatures, with signees describing the choice to show “Diffuse Control” as “disappointing,” “disgusting” and in “poor taste.”\nPaul Baker Prindle is the Gabriele Haberland Director of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and the curator for the new exhibition “Diffuse Control.” He told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” the exhibition touches on big questions around artificial intelligence and new technologies.\n“When I went to go see the work at Beeple’s studio, I found myself asking more and more questions,” Baker Prindle told WPR. “That’s usually an indicator that there’s something there worth talking about.”\nBaker Prindle told WPR about the new exhibition and responded to criticism of the new artwork.\nThe following was edited for clarity and brevity.\nKate Archer Kent: You picked out these images and submitted them into the artist Beeple’s machine that he has created. Tell us how that works, and how these images transform as part of the installation.\nPaul Baker Prindle: Simply put: It is a sculpture that moves. We could call it a kinetic sculpture. It has 12 flat screens. It’s a very seductive object. It has a presence. At times, there is something uncannily religious about it. The way it sits in the space and kind of commands attention, it’s unsettling.\nIt has a computer inside of it and that computer is running a software program. That software program was developed using a wide array of tools and, perhaps controversially, it used AI to help build the program. Then Mike Winkelmann, as the artist Beeple, created a base image inspired by an artwork from our collection, and then visitors can use a control kiosk to manipulate that image. The base image that Mike created is pretty different from the original, and then we can take it even farther.\nIt’s an artwork that really reflects the sort of central terms of Mike’s practice, which are these questions of: How do we work in society? How do we talk to each other? How do we exercise, wield and yield control in social settings? What happens when one person controls the levers, or when multiple people are controlling the levers of decision making?\nIn this artwork, when multiple people try to do it in competition, it goes into what’s called glitch mode, and then it stops doing what you want it to do. So in this way there is a simple kind of surface. But then when you spend time with it and you think about it, it really pushes on a lot of uncomfortable and perhaps unresolved notions that we’re all carrying just by being humans living on this planet.\nKAK: More than 900 people have signed an open letter pushing back on your choice to feature the exhibition. How do you feel seeing the pushback you’ve received on diffuse control?\nPBP: I relate to it as an important part of what we do. It’s not my expectation that everyone be pleased with what we do at a contemporary art museum. If we look at the history of contemporary art museums — looking at the 1990s forward — we look at the culture wars quite frequently. \nContemporary art museums do things that make people upset. I think we have to agree that there’s a special utility for the kind of space that we’ve created. I would argue that, perhaps now more than ever, we need to exercise our skills in talking about things that we don’t like or things that we don’t understand or maybe agree with.\nMy role is to create the space, but I do my best not to speak about my own personal feelings about an artwork, or guide people toward an expected conclusion. That’s not what we do. So the open letter is really a healthy part of what we do. We’ve listened, and I would propose that one can listen and hear, but also still not agree.\nKAK: But talk us through the copyright and consent aspect to this installation. One grievance from the open letter argues that you’re using artwork without the artist’s consent. Can you talk about that?\nPBP: That’s kind of true, and also not.\nThere are three (collections): Two of them are historical material and one is more contemporary. We spoke with everyone we could who still held copyright on the contemporary work — that meant we talked with estate trustees and with the one living artist that’s in the exhibition. Where consent was required by the law, we received it.\nIn my response through press and through our frequently asked questions page, I addressed this one element of the open letter where we’re asked to consider a moral position on fair use and public domain. A lot of the older works that we’re using are part of the public domain.\nPublic domain is such an incredible thing in that, because we can’t know what someone who’s been dead for 500 years or 1,000 years, or 2,000 years would think, we need to agree to certain terms. I think public domain has worked very well. But this situation introduces something new and I think we ought to talk about that.\nKAK: Would you consider forming an AI policy for the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in the future? Is a type of policy like that coming together now?\nPBP: We have informal policies on how we use AI. We write our own original content. We don’t use AI for that. \nBut I think it’s incredibly dangerous to create blanket policies, around artists especially. I want artists to make art and to leave it up to them, and then we make decisions on what we’re going to exhibit based on its relevance.\nKAK: Given the pushback this installation has received, what lessons have you learned about showcasing artwork that uses generative artificial intelligence technology?\nPBP: I think museums are special places where we need to be able to look at these things. I think this artwork and the conversations we’re having about this artwork, I think can inform some of the arguably more impactful issues around AI.\nThe fact is, most Americans, including Wisconsinites, are against the construction of additional data centers. I think we need to understand why and I think we also need to recognize that many of us are already using technology that is using data centers. So whether you’re storing a document in Google Drive or you’re using MyChart, you are using AI. The Adobe Creative Suite has been using AI tools for several years now.\nOne of the calls has been, “We don’t want anything having to do with AI in the museum.” That would be very difficult because most artists, if they’re not using it to create art, they’re using it to create their CVs, they’re using it to answer emails, they’re doing it in all sorts of ways.\nI think that this exhibition has drawn ire, but I think we need to recognize that we’re all in it. I think it’s a pestilence in our society where, in our contemporary moment, we tend to speak about things as if we aren’t in it. I don’t think that that contributes to long-term solution making. 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More than 900 people have signed an open letter calling to shut down the project…","quality_bucket":"high","quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 8174 characters.","reading_time_min":7,"cluster_id":null},"card":{"display_title":"Madison art museum debuts new exhibition using generative AI amidst pushback - WPR","subtitle":"WPR · 2026-09-25","summary":"The curator of a new exhibition in the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is defending the installation’s use of generative artificial intelligence to allow viewers to manipulate digital artwork. More than 900 people…","badges":["quality:high"],"links":{"read":"/item/90445","original":"https://www.wpr.org/news/madison-art-museum-new-exhibition-generative-ai-pushback","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.wpr.org/news/madison-art-museum-new-exhibition-generative-ai-pushback"},"quality_warning":null},"export":{"title":"Madison art museum debuts new exhibition using generative AI amidst pushback - WPR","url":"https://www.wpr.org/news/madison-art-museum-new-exhibition-generative-ai-pushback","summary":"The curator of a new exhibition in the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is defending the installation’s use of generative artificial intelligence to allow viewers to manipulate digital artwork. More than 900 people have signed an open letter calling to shut down the project due to the project’s AI use.","source":"WPR","date":"2026-09-25T21:06:00+00:00","content":"The curator of a new exhibition in the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is defending the installation’s use of generative artificial intelligence to allow viewers to manipulate digital artwork. More than 900 people have signed an open letter calling to shut down the project due to the project’s AI use.\nThe exhibition “Diffuse Control” by the digital artist Beeple debuted in Madison Saturday. It features 12 synchronized video screens that are fed artwork by the museum’s curator. Viewers can use their phones and a control panel to interact with the art on the screens, modifying and iterating on the art in real time.\nUnderstanding Wisconsin, Together.\nWPR’s “Wisconsin Today” newsletter keeps you connected to the state you love without feeling overwhelmed. No paywall. No agenda. No corporate filter.\nThe choice to show the installation “Diffuse Control” has faced pushback. Local artist Noah Peterson sent an open letter to the museum, arguing that the museum failed to gather explicit consent from artists to feed their work into the exhibition, which uses generative artificial intelligence.\nThe letter also argues that the use of the technology itself is unethical, as the type of AI model used to generate images or video — called a diffusion model — is trained on scraping art without artists’ consent.\nThe letter has garnered more than 900 signatures, with signees describing the choice to show “Diffuse Control” as “disappointing,” “disgusting” and in “poor taste.”\nPaul Baker Prindle is the Gabriele Haberland Director of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and the curator for the new exhibition “Diffuse Control.” He told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” the exhibition touches on big questions around artificial intelligence and new technologies.\n“When I went to go see the work at Beeple’s studio, I found myself asking more and more questions,” Baker Prindle told WPR. “That’s usually an indicator that there’s something there worth talking about.”\nBaker Prindle told WPR about the new exhibition and responded to criticism of the new artwork.\nThe following was edited for clarity and brevity.\nKate Archer Kent: You picked out these images and submitted them into the artist Beeple’s machine that he has created. Tell us how that works, and how these images transform as part of the installation.\nPaul Baker Prindle: Simply put: It is a sculpture that moves. We could call it a kinetic sculpture. It has 12 flat screens. It’s a very seductive object. It has a presence. At times, there is something uncannily religious about it. The way it sits in the space and kind of commands attention, it’s unsettling.\nIt has a computer inside of it and that computer is running a software program. That software program was developed using a wide array of tools and, perhaps controversially, it used AI to help build the program. Then Mike Winkelmann, as the artist Beeple, created a base image inspired by an artwork from our collection, and then visitors can use a control kiosk to manipulate that image. The base image that Mike created is pretty different from the original, and then we can take it even farther.\nIt’s an artwork that really reflects the sort of central terms of Mike’s practice, which are these questions of: How do we work in society? How do we talk to each other? How do we exercise, wield and yield control in social settings? What happens when one person controls the levers, or when multiple people are controlling the levers of decision making?\nIn this artwork, when multiple people try to do it in competition, it goes into what’s called glitch mode, and then it stops doing what you want it to do. So in this way there is a simple kind of surface. But then when you spend time with it and you think about it, it really pushes on a lot of uncomfortable and perhaps unresolved notions that we’re all carrying just by being humans living on this planet.\nKAK: More than 900 people have signed an open letter pushing back on your choice to feature the exhibition. How do you feel seeing the pushback you’ve received on diffuse control?\nPBP: I relate to it as an important part of what we do. It’s not my expectation that everyone be pleased with what we do at a contemporary art museum. If we look at the history of contemporary art museums — looking at the 1990s forward — we look at the culture wars quite frequently. \nContemporary art museums do things that make people upset. I think we have to agree that there’s a special utility for the kind of space that we’ve created. I would argue that, perhaps now more than ever, we need to exercise our skills in talking about things that we don’t like or things that we don’t understand or maybe agree with.\nMy role is to create the space, but I do my best not to speak about my own personal feelings about an artwork, or guide people toward an expected conclusion. That’s not what we do. So the open letter is really a healthy part of what we do. We’ve listened, and I would propose that one can listen and hear, but also still not agree.\nKAK: But talk us through the copyright and consent aspect to this installation. One grievance from the open letter argues that you’re using artwork without the artist’s consent. Can you talk about that?\nPBP: That’s kind of true, and also not.\nThere are three (collections): Two of them are historical material and one is more contemporary. We spoke with everyone we could who still held copyright on the contemporary work — that meant we talked with estate trustees and with the one living artist that’s in the exhibition. Where consent was required by the law, we received it.\nIn my response through press and through our frequently asked questions page, I addressed this one element of the open letter where we’re asked to consider a moral position on fair use and public domain. A lot of the older works that we’re using are part of the public domain.\nPublic domain is such an incredible thing in that, because we can’t know what someone who’s been dead for 500 years or 1,000 years, or 2,000 years would think, we need to agree to certain terms. I think public domain has worked very well. But this situation introduces something new and I think we ought to talk about that.\nKAK: Would you consider forming an AI policy for the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in the future? Is a type of policy like that coming together now?\nPBP: We have informal policies on how we use AI. We write our own original content. We don’t use AI for that. \nBut I think it’s incredibly dangerous to create blanket policies, around artists especially. I want artists to make art and to leave it up to them, and then we make decisions on what we’re going to exhibit based on its relevance.\nKAK: Given the pushback this installation has received, what lessons have you learned about showcasing artwork that uses generative artificial intelligence technology?\nPBP: I think museums are special places where we need to be able to look at these things. I think this artwork and the conversations we’re having about this artwork, I think can inform some of the arguably more impactful issues around AI.\nThe fact is, most Americans, including Wisconsinites, are against the construction of additional data centers. I think we need to understand why and I think we also need to recognize that many of us are already using technology that is using data centers. So whether you’re storing a document in Google Drive or you’re using MyChart, you are using AI. The Adobe Creative Suite has been using AI tools for several years now.\nOne of the calls has been, “We don’t want anything having to do with AI in the museum.” That would be very difficult because most artists, if they’re not using it to create art, they’re using it to create their CVs, they’re using it to answer emails, they’re doing it in all sorts of ways.\nI think that this exhibition has drawn ire, but I think we need to recognize that we’re all in it. I think it’s a pestilence in our society where, in our contemporary moment, we tend to speak about things as if we aren’t in it. I don’t think that that contributes to long-term solution making. I think we don’t have to agree with something to look it in the eye.","confidence":0.9,"diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.wpr.org/news/madison-art-museum-new-exhibition-generative-ai-pushback","quality_bucket":"high","failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 8174 characters.","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 8174 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":8174,"summary_length":305,"usable_text_length":8174,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":8174,"summary_length":305}},"tags":[],"format_contract_version":"news_item_formats.v1"}}}