Conversations | Who Builds the Canon? Infrastructure, Authorship, and Digital Culture

Why It Matters

As digital artworks become central to contemporary culture, redefining authorship, valuation, and institutional legitimacy will shape the future market and historical record of art.

Key Takeaways

• Digital art's canon shifting from galleries to blockchain platforms.
• Artists gain global reach but face new collector education challenges.
• Curators must translate traditional expertise into decentralized digital contexts.
• Online exhibitions prioritize simple curation over immersive VR experiences.
• Rightclick Save bridges art criticism and community-driven discourse.

Summary

The final conversation of Art Basel Hong Kong 2026 explored who constructs the art canon in an era defined by digital infrastructure, authorship, and evolving cultural norms. Moderated by Eli Shinman, the panel featured curator Sunny Chong of M+, multidisciplinary artist Amy Kusano, and Rightclick Save founder Tony, each offering distinct perspectives on how blockchain, online platforms, and institutional practices intersect. Key insights highlighted the tension between the promise of decentralization and the realities of market dynamics. Amy described how pandemic‑era NFTs propelled her from a Japanese‑language community to exhibitions in New York and London, yet she noted that traditional collectors find mint‑and‑sell mechanisms overwhelming. Sunny emphasized that curatorial authority is now distributed across multiple knowledge bases, from blockchain provenance to digital preservation concerns such as bit‑rot. Tony outlined Rightclick Save’s mission to provide non‑selling, text‑driven online exhibitions that serve as a bridge between conventional art criticism and participatory community discourse. Notable moments included Amy’s anecdote about learning English through global collector interactions, Sunny’s comparison of disc‑magazine culture to today’s decentralized networks, and Tony’s vision of a simple, text‑focused exhibition model that avoids immersive VR while encouraging open forums for critique. The panel also underscored the paradox that price often precedes scholarly discourse in the digital art market, prompting a call for more structured evaluation frameworks. The discussion signals a broader institutional shift: museums and galleries must adapt to digital preservation, provenance verification, and inclusive curatorial practices. For investors and artists alike, understanding these new power dynamics is essential to navigating valuation, reputation building, and the long‑term sustainability of digital art’s place in the cultural canon.

Original Description

Presented as part of Zero 10

Sunny Cheung, Curator, Design and Architecture, M+, Hong Kong

Emi Kusano, artist, Tokyo

Tony Lyu, Director, Right Click Save, Seoul

Moderator: Eli Scheinman, Curator & Program Lead, Zero 10, Art Basel, digital art strategist, Kingston 

The infrastructure of digital culture is being built in real time – through the platforms that distribute and preserve art, the institutions deciding what to collect, the artists asserting control over the tools and data that shape their practice, and the collectors and publishers documenting what matters. Yet as these systems take shape, a fundamental question remains open: who determines what endures? This panel brought together artist Emi Kusano, the curator of design and architecture at M+, Sunny Cheung, and collector, investor, and Right Click Save director Tony Lyu for a conversation on authorship, ownership, and the forces shaping the next decade’s cultural canon. Moving beyond the hype cycles that have defined digital art’s recent history, the discussion examines who holds the power to shape what lasts: the artist, the institution, the collector, or the code itself.

Sunny Cheung is Curator of Design and Architecture at M+. He has a keen interest in cutting-edge digital art and design practices as well as contemporary art. He has worked on a variety of international exhibitions including ‘Values of Design’ (2020) at the V&A Gallery at Design Society in Shenzhen and ‘Beautiful world, where are you?’ at the 10th edition of the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art.

Emi Kusano is a multidisciplinary artist born in Tokyo in 1990. Her practice integrates emerging technologies, including AI, to explore nostalgia, pop culture, and collective memory. Her work has been exhibited internationally in over 20 countries at institutions including M+ (Hong Kong), Saatchi Gallery (London), Grand Palais Immersif (Paris), Francisco Carolinum (Linz), and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. In 2025, she was recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

Tony Lyu is an angel investor focused on technology, consumer, and content industries. He is the publisher and director of Right Click Save, a digital art magazine. He is a patron of LACMA, Serpentine, the Guggenheim Museum, the New Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and was a collector-in-residence at Delfina Foundation. Lyu founded Korbit, Korea’s first cryptocurrency exchange, in 2013 and led it through its acquisition in 2017.

Eli Scheinman is a digital art strategist and curator, shaping the future of art collecting at the intersection of technology and culture. A community-builder and early-stage operator, he has led initiatives and built companies across Web3 and fine art including PROOF (acquired by Yuga Labs). Today, Scheinman works with collectors and artists to facilitate the acquisition of high-value digital art and to develop new models for artist releases and collector engagement.

Stage furniture by Porro and B&B Italia, courtesy of Salone del Mobile.Milano