PARAGON Foundation
Cultural responsibility.
A long-term perspective.
The PARAGON Foundation connects the advancement of art and culture with technological development. Our purpose is a future in which significant works retain their knowledge, reach more people and remain connected to a traceable context across generations.
Giving art a lasting presence.
Works of art outlive their immediate surroundings. Yet knowledge about them is distributed among people, archives and institutions. Access changes; responsibility passes to others. PARAGON focuses on keeping these relationships connected.
Vision 2040 sets out a long-term perspective for the memory of a work, its cultural presence and the actions that can be responsibly taken around it. This horizon provides a shared direction. Progress becomes visible through concrete capabilities and outcomes that can be understood and assessed.
Technology serving a cultural purpose.
The Foundation’s core expertise is technology. PARAGON translates the needs of artists and art institutions into system design, applications and technical specifications. Together with SQARES, it brings this knowledge to the art world as a charitable contribution. The participating partners contribute and take responsibility for specialist interpretation and curatorial expertise.
Artwork Spirit brings this work together in three dimensions: Mind preserves and develops knowledge; Presence opens up forms of presentation and dialogue; Agency coordinates rights and authorised processes. The work of art remains their common point of reference.
Concrete projects are intended to create reusable capabilities for institutional teams. Interfaces and institutional licences provide the intended basis for use across their own collections and programmes. Development, application and continuing operation each receive a clear scope of work and identifiable responsibilities.
Trust grows through work that can be traced.
Sources, versions and review status give knowledge a context. Approvals connect presentations and processes with those responsible for them. These principles shape both the technical architecture and institutional collaboration.
Institutions determine their contributions, access and publications within an agreed framework. Existing systems, curatorial decisions and different forms of participation are taken into account. Collaboration should extend institutions' ability to act.
Lasting usefulness also requires documentation, export and orderly handovers. We therefore consider continuity around a work to be a shared organisational and technical task. Quality is demonstrated through verifiable outcomes and through the practical contribution an application makes to cultural work.
Let us start a conversation.
For institutional partnerships, specialist exchange and questions about Vision 2040, contact the PARAGON Foundation at foundation@para-gon.org.
We would be pleased to discuss the works, questions or programmes that could provide a starting point for joint development.
Neumarkt 10 · 04109 Leipzig · Germany