A Letter From The Curator

Hello Everyone,

It is a great pleasure and honour to be releasing a new Zium for you all to enjoy. I wanted to return to The Zium Project with a smaller, more focused collection than previous years, and that is what we have made for you. The collection of artists represent the ways that The Zium celebrates all forms of artwork, those that thrive in the interactive, digital space, and more traditional works. The Zium Gallery is a more focused, and just as rich, offering, and I hope you enjoy it very much.

It remains important to me that The Zium remains free. Like many of the world's great galleries, you are able to walk through their doors and enjoy the works therein without purchasing a ticket. Doing so is one of the great treasured thrills and experiences of my life, and I wouldn't want that to be any different for a virtual gallery, either.

However, I do also want to continue to support the artists that I work with in The Zium, as well as The Zium itself, so The Zium Gallery in 2022 is the first release where we are opening donations from visitors. You will be able to pay-what-you-want on itch.io when you download The Zium Gallery. Of course, you are welcome to download The Zium Gallery for free, and please, be my guest. Though, if you are able and willing, please consider supporting The Zium however you can. There is more information about such things on the main itch.io page.

There are also a number of ways to directly show your support of The Artists this year, too. There are QR codes attached to every artwork, which when scanned will either take you to the artists' website, or to a place where you can purchase reproductions of the displayed work, from various artist's store or print services, itch.io pages and the like. This kind of 'connection' to artists on the world wide web was a highly requested feature during the original run of Ziums, so I wanted to put a lot of effort into fulfilling that desire. Not to mention, it is a great thing to be able to see an inspirational work, and in a second, be able to connect with that artist online. So, you can do that, too.

The Zium is one of the great joys in my life, to be able to curate, and develop a virtual gallery, is a wonderful thing. Especially to be able to work with such incredible artists, to collaborate and develop the gallery along side them, and for all of you, is a great privilege. I hope you'll all enjoy the new collection.

The Zium Gallery releases February 2nd 2022, for Mac, Windows and Linux.

All the best,

Michael Berto,
Curator.