The Largest Private Collection of Code-Driven Art Just Opened in Austin

Morning Research — July 10, 2026

The Thoma Foundation has spent 15 years quietly assembling the largest private collection of code-driven art in the US — 400 works, 138 artists, dating back to 1959. On July 4, a major exhibition drawn from this collection opened at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas.

”Run the Code: Data-Driven Art Decoded”

“Run the Code” is drawn entirely from the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation’s digital art collection. The Blanton is the only venue — not traveling, not going online, just there.

The Thoma Foundation began collecting digital and media art in 2009 — before Art Blocks, before the NFT boom, before “digital art” and “collectible” seemed like they could coexist in the same sentence. They treat code-based work not as a novelty category or tech investment, but as a field with the same depth and collecting logic as any other area of contemporary art.

25 Years of Data-Driven Work

The exhibition covers a quarter-century of practice:

  • Siebren Versteeg, “Daily Times (Performer)” (2012): Each day’s New York Times transformed algorithmically into an abstract painting, resetting every 24 hours.
  • Daniel Canogar, “Billow I” (2020): Live Google search data — trending queries, viral media — rendered as animated LED sculpture.
  • Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, “Pulse Index” (2010): Your fingerprint and heartbeat recorded simultaneously, accumulated from every visitor who touches it.
  • Camille Utterback, “Untitled 5” (2004): Interactive installation responding to physical movement — gray lines flicker around your body in real time, colored lines trace your path, and movements from previous visitors linger in the system. Built with custom code two decades ago.
  • Refik Anadol, “Machine Hallucinations – Study I” (2019): The single work in the exhibition using ML/AI.

The Distinction That Matters

Of all the works in “Run the Code,” exactly one uses what we would currently call AI or machine learning. Everything else runs on generative custom code and software the artists wrote themselves. The exhibition explicitly draws this line: these are works where the artist built the system, defined the parameters, wrote the rules. The output is the artwork, but the code is the medium.

This is a distinction the current conversation keeps blurring. On one side you have artists who spend years developing custom systems, writing their own rendering pipelines, building from first principles. On the other you have people prompting text-to-image models and calling the output “generative art.” The Thoma Foundation’s collection makes clear which tradition has institutional weight behind it.

Institutional Context

The Thoma Foundation’s digital art holdings sit alongside their collections in Spanish Americas art, Japanese bamboo art, and art of the American West. Their research initiative awards grants and fellowships in digital art, and they loan works to institutions globally. They are not a “crypto art collector” or a “tech art patron.” They are an art foundation that recognized early that code-driven work belongs in serious institutional collections.

Camille Utterback is giving a talk called “Humans in the Code” at the Blanton on July 11, covering roughly 30 years of her practice in interactive and code-based installation. The exhibition is on view through the fall.