The Philadelphia Museum of Art Manuscript is a twenty-five-chapter sequence of algorithmic essays on twenty-five paintings from the Philadelphia Museum of Art — a codex within the Codex Algorithm, made in the algorithmic feed itself — the medium Matthew Olivier claims for the work. Each chapter takes a single painting as its case study, reading it not as a relic but as a piece of working software: a designed system for managing where the eye goes, what it lingers on, and what it chooses to remember.
The manuscript was commissioned in January 2026 by Dennis Alter, Trustee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Twenty-five paintings, selected for the codex from across the museum’s collection — three centuries of practice in a single sequence.
All twenty-five chapters are written. The manuscript begins publishing on June 2, 2026 and completes on August 14, 2026 — a ten-week release across twenty-five paintings from the museum. Each chapter releases on the published schedule; the page you are reading is the table of contents.
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