Museum acquires the @ symbol for its collection

The @ symbol is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. While it sounds like a Dadaist prank, the MoMA is very serious about this acquisition. That said, they're not blind to the conceptual artyness of the news. From the MoMA, where you can also read a fascinating history of the symbol:

 Explore Inside Out Inside Out Wp-Content Uploads 2010 03 At-Symbol-4.Sm 1The acquisition of @ takes one more step. It relies on the assumption that physical possession of an object as a requirement for an acquisition is no longer necessary, and therefore it sets curators free to tag the world and acknowledge things that "cannot be had"–because they are too big (buildings, Boeing 747's, satellites), or because they are in the air and belong to everybody and to no one, like the @–as art objects befitting MoMA's collection…

Being in the public realm, @ is free. It might be the only truly free–albeit not the only priceless–object in our collection.

We have acquired the design act in itself and as we will feature it in different typefaces, we will note each time the specific typeface as if we were indicating the materials that a physical object is made of.

@ at MoMA (via Imaginary Foundation)