[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/calendar-Beeple-DIFFUSE-CONTROL.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tA Beeple artwork set to appear at Wisconsin\u2019s Madison Museum of Contemporary Art next month has rankled locals who object to the way that the piece uses AI to analyze artworks in the institution\u2019s collection.<\/p>\n
\n\tAn open letter about the piece, titled Diffuse Control<\/em> (2025), calls into question the ethics of allowing Beeple to scrape images of artworks from the museum\u2019s holdings, seemingly without permission from many of the artists or their representatives. Visitors to the museum will be able to create and buy images displayed on the work\u2019s screens, the museum has said.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cDiffuse Control is completely devoid of any critical engagement, incapable of human understanding, and the only intent keeping it upright is Beeple\u2019s intent to sell you an AI generated print for $75 before you walk out of the building,\u201d the letter reads. Published at the end of August, the letter has gained more than 600 signatures, many of them from locals.<\/p>\n Diffuse Control<\/em>, a stacked structure featuring screens displaying digital orbs, appeared at the Shed in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2025. In the case of the latter presentation, the museum allowed Beeple to draw on what a release described as \u201ca rotating selection of artworks from LACMA\u2019s permanent collection,\u201d including a Paul Gauguin painting and a set of Turkish tiles from the 1580s. <\/p>\n \n\tNeither institution ever released a full list of the artworks scraped by Diffuse Control<\/em>, whose concept appears to be a clear reference to Refik Anadol\u2019s much-publicized piece Unsupervised<\/em> (2022), which used AI to reimagine works owned by the Museum of Modern Art. Anadol\u2019s work was largely reviled by art critics, less for ethical reasons than aesthetic ones. Ben Davis and Jerry Saltz both compared it to a lava lamp.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Madison Museum of Contemporary Art has stated the piece\u2019s Wisconsin iteration will use works by Francisco Goya, Rosa Bonheur, James McNeill Whistler, Gertrude Abercrombie, Utagawa Hiroshige, and Barbara Rossi, among others. Many of the artists listed worked before the 20th century, and many of their works are in the public domain. But some were active more recently and produced pieces that are typically subject to copyright law.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cBy volunteering work from their collection without the artist\u2019s consent MMoCA has overridden these artist\u2019s agency and compromised their legacies,\u201d the letter states. \u201cThese artists have had their work transformed into consumerist spectacle with the intention of selling prints and boosting Beeple\u2019s prestige. Art institutions must not input art from their collection into AI models without permission from the original artist.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn the release for the Wisconsin presentation, museum director Paul Baker Prindle sought to situate Diffuse Control<\/em> within a legacy that includes Vera Moln\u00e1r and Harold Cohen, two artists who used algorithms to dictate the creation of drawings. The letter calls his statement \u201ca deflection, not an answer to the commonly expressed ethical concerns surrounding generative AI usage in art.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe letter calls for the museum to release the full list of artworks scraped for the Beeple piece. \u201cIf a work can\u2019t show its receipts, MMoCA shouldn\u2019t show the work,\u201d it concludes. A spokesperson for the museum did not respond to ARTnews<\/em>\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n \n\tThe point of the letter, its unidentified writers note, is not \u201cto fearmonger over computers in art, or to say that digital art is inherently wrong.\u201d But several signatories went on to label Diffuse Control <\/em>\u201canti-art\u201d in their comments.<\/p>\n \n\tBeeple, who first gained fame for an NFT that set off a boom in the art world when it sold for $69 million, did not respond to request for comment. Yet the Wisconsin-born artist also appeared to obliquely respond to the letter on social media, writing on X on Monday night, \u201c\u2018that\u2019s not art\u2019 has never aged well.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/beeple-artwork-wisconsin-museum-controversy-ai-1234796433\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/calendar-Beeple-DIFFUSE-CONTROL.jpg?w=1024″] A Beeple artwork set to appear at Wisconsin\u2019s Madison Museum of Contemporary Art next month has rankled locals who object to the way that the piece uses AI to analyze artworks in the institution\u2019s collection. An open letter about the piece, titled Diffuse Control (2025), calls into question the ethics of allowing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2123026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2123026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2123026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2123026\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2123026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2123026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2123026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}