Sign @ The Times
From Art Info:
NEW YORK-The Museum of Modern Art's
architecture and design department has decided to acquire the @
symbol, according to the New York Times. The typographic
element joins a total collection of 175,000 items, with around
28,000 housed within the architecture and design department.
The department's acquisitions committee selected the work for
what Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at
the museum, terms its "extraordinary elegance and economy." It
could be thought of a design equivalent of Marcel Duchamp's readymades,
which repurposed found objects, like a urinal or a shovel, as art
works. Before Raymond Tomlinson used the @ symbol to send an email
message in 1971, it had been used in accounting to signify a rate
as shorthand for "at the rate of." With a shift in context, a new
piece of design was created.
The department decided simply to acquire the symbol, rather than
a particular version of it, meaning it will enter the collection
for free.