“New Media: When,” currently on view through May 20 at the Neuberger Museum of Art, invites visitors to interact with and manipulate an artwork, not just passively observe it. “The exhibition focuses on the concept that an artwork can change over time through responsive interface and generative software,” noted Jacqueline Shilkoff, who curated the show, “and that the perception of time within an artwork is subjective and variable.”

Included in this exhibition are Char Davies’s virtual reality work “Osmose/Ephémère,” an immersive exploration of time and space; LoVid’s installation “Inverted H-barn,” an enterable audio-visual synthesizer; Marshall Reese’s and Nora Ligorano’s “History’s Garden,” a working metronome that displays a micro-LCD; and Brooke Singer’s “(in)visible,” a work addressing “surveillance creep.” “New Media: When” is part of a five-part exhibition series †”New Media: Who, What, Where, When and Why” †that samples and contextualizes technology-based artwork.

Davies is one of the first artists to use virtual reality as an art form. To experience “Osmose/Ephémère,” one dons a vest and helmet containing sensors then enters the work, which is an immersive exploration of time and space. “Ephémère,” 1998, is seen here for the first time in the metro-New York region.

LoVid’s “Inverted H-barn,” 2007, built with a combination of high- and low-tech material, is in the shape of a heptagon, the shape of which is based on the history of time. It focuses on three epochs, from the birth of the universe to the present, and the theories of space-time and parallel universes. To experience this piece, one crawls through the structure’s center where one can watch a video, composed by continually changing audio and video signals generated by a halo of electronic components and fine circuitry.

“History’s Garden,” 2006, was created by Reese and Ligorano, videographers, performance and digital artists. Embedded on the tiny LCD screen, which sits on the counterweight of this working metronome, is footage of political refugees from the 1930s to the present, demonstrating the cyclical nature of warfare.

A website, computer information center and workstation embody Singer’s design prototype for electronic pins. Visitors can make their own infrared LED pins, which are invisible to the human eye, but visible to surveillance cameras, to show solidarity in favor of limiting the use of surveillance cameras

Related programming includes a lecture by Marek Walczak, “Space and Sensibility,” cohosted with the School of Art + Design, on Wednesday, April 11, at 6:30 pm. On Wednesday, May 2, at 6:30 pm, Canadian artist Davies will present a lecture.

Museum director Thom Collins recently announced that the Purchase College Foundation/Neuberger Museum of Art Endowment has received an extraordinary $1 million bequest from the estate of the late Alex Gordon to fund the creation of the Alex Gordon Curator for pre-Columbian Art and Art of the Americas, a full-time curatorial position at the Neuberger Museum of Art.

This curator will work with the museum staff to produce exhibitions, publications and public programs in this exciting field, while also teaching in the department of art history at Purchase College.

“We are deeply grateful to the family of Alex Gordon for this exceptionally generous gift,” said Collins. “This bequest will enable us to invigorate our commitment to teaching, research and programming.”

To launch the pre-Columbian programming, the Neuberger Museum of Art will organize and implement a symposium in the fall that will focus on the state of scholarship of pre-Columbian art and art of the Americas in academia and the museums of North America. Several preeminent scholars will be invited to participate as featured guests.

Born in 1920, Alex Gordon was a businessman by vocation, a serious scholar and collector of Old Master paintings and drawings and pre-Columbian art and artifacts by avocation. It was his wish that his estate support scholarship in his areas of artistic interest. To date, it has made significant gifts to the Morgan Library, the Frick Collection and Columbia University.

The Neuberger Museum of Art is at 735 Anderson Hill Road. For information, www.neuberger.org or 914-251-6100.