The Whitney Museum is looking back on a quarter-century of internet art with a new exhibition opening on 21 November. Artport: A History of Internet Art gathers more than 100 works made for the web, tracing a medium that has grown from a curiosity into a central part of contemporary practice.

The Whitney's artport programme has commissioned and presented net art since the early days of the web, and the exhibition draws on that history to show how artists have used the internet as a material, a venue and a subject. The works range from early experiments to recent pieces, and together they chart the changing shape of the network itself.

Alongside the exhibition, the museum will stage performances of Operator's Act III on 19, 21 and 22 November, bringing the live, time-based side of internet art into the galleries. The performances underline that net art is not only something to look at on a screen, but something that happens in real time and in shared space.

The show opens at a moment when the internet's early history is already being treated as heritage, and when the platforms that once felt open have become commercial and controlled. By looking back over 25 years, the Whitney asks what the web meant for art, and what art made of the web in return. The Whitney has been collecting and commissioning internet art since the 1990s, when the web was still new, and artport has become one of the most important archives of the medium. The exhibition is a chance to see how artists responded to each new phase of the internet, from dial-up to social media.