**4. Conclusions**

The purpose of this paper was to discover whether holography as a medium for artistic expression had in the last few decades found its way into mainstream galleries and fine art museums. Initially, celebrated artists from various media including Salvador Dali, Bruce Nauman, James Turrell, Louise Bourgeois and Michael Snow amongs<sup>t</sup> others were commissioned to collaborate on holographic works in an e ffort to bring artistic credibility and validation to the emerging technology. Artists who began their practice in collaboration with scientists often went on to create "labs" of their own and developed and extended the visual and physical language of art holography. Today a handful of fine art museum collections are accepting donations of these seminal artworks. Current representations by artists working in holography include gallery installations encompassing the broader parameters of the technology including holographic interferometry, light, video and laser projections. Taken together, while several private collections and museums have acquired holograms by artists in the decades since the MOH closed, the medium has not gained the foothold that would be expected of a visual art that has been in existence for over fifty years.

Physically, the properties of holograms are not especially di fferent from other sensitive material factors found in contemporary media art. The aforementioned considerations of caring for unstable gelatins, aging lasers, the unique requirements of archival storage, specific exhibition and lighting concerns are important contributing factors to a museum's acceptance of a donation but perhaps the greater paradox for museum curators continues to be the line between technological gimmickry and aesthetic value, hence the preference to collect established artists in other media who have made holograms as an extension of their oeuvre.

In time, art world curators will catch up with the existing wealth of holographic art as a specific genre and more than a means of augmenting existing photography collections. In time, the success of an artist's holographic work will not be whether it projects into deep space or shows unusually bright color or animation. The best fine art holograms will transcend their technology and imbue the viewer with a desire to look further in the same way that a sculpture seductively invites the viewer to move around the object to see all sides and experience the volume of the work as a whole. Artists say that creating images that lack material textures but are visible dimensionally as light cannot be compared to other media but that is exactly what is required—holograms and installations that take the medium for granted and stand up to all and any comparison.

**Funding:** This research has received no external funding.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflicts of interest.
