Don Hanson and Sammie Veeler
New Art City is a virtual art gallery and exhibition toolkit for digital artists, which prioritizes access, expressivity, and care. As a 3D multiplayer tool, New Art City allows artists to design their dream exhibitions and present them in a fine art context for a global audience. Since 2020, the team has built infrastructure used by thousands of artists with partners spanning education, cultural institutions and the underground. Don Hanson is the founder and product designer at New Art City, leading a small team to create an easy and accessible tool for artists to present their work. As a practicing artist and musician, Don has performed, spoken and exhibited internationally. His work has been featured in the New York Times, South by Southwest, Art in America and CBC radio. Sammie Veeler is an artist and the co-founder of New Art City. As Gallery Director, she is responsible for developing the gallery program and has helped facilitate many of the nearly 200 public exhibitions. In 2023 she established Virtual Access Lab as a nonprofit research unit of New Art City, which organizes around accessibility and preservation of digital media, with support from the Eyebeam Democracy Machine Fellowship and Gray Area Creative R&D Labs.