Longtime Volunteer Creates Monitors of Modern Art Website

Encouraged by his parents to find a place to volunteer, Super Geek Louis Jacobowitz first joined  Kramden in high school. Over the past 8+ years, Louis transformed into Kramden’s Monitor Testing Guru. On any given Wednesday Work Night, he can be found in the monitor testing area, ensuring all monitors are correctly functioning before distribution.

One day when testing, a fellow volunteer pointed out that some broken monitors almost looked like modern art. Louis decided to take some pictures, and the rest was history.

Out of a desire to put something on his resume for college, Louis put together a website featuring “Monitors of Modern Art.” For years, each Monday, the website has been updated with a haul from the previous Wednesday’s broken monitors. Louis explained that it started with just cropping but evolved into toggling all the sliders to make the best-looking image possible from each broken screen. Eventually, he also began writing descriptions for each collection.

“I tried to frame them as if I was the curator of an art gallery, trying to explain why the art was significant.”

Even after graduating college and starting full-time work, Louis regularly joins Kramden to help. His goal? Louis says if he must hit a stopping point, he wants to “push out to an even 400 collections… we’re only on collection 372 right now.”

A random sampling of images can be found on the front page of the website, https://artmonitors.com, beneath the blurb about the most recently-published collection. For a deeper dive, check out a few of Louis’ personal favorites below.

Louis notes that those with asterisks* are not representative of the general style of works – “They stand out in that way,” he shared, “which is part of why I like them.”

• Lightning Birds
• Heart
• Universal Rebirth*
• Glint on Scales*
• Caged Spirit*
• Elysium of Geometry
• Hidden Mysticism
• Gradient in Stages