MINNEAPOLIS - Warning: This is a story about online cat videos. If you're among the seemingly tiny minority not interested in watching a one-minute clip of a cat in a T-shirt pounding on a piano keyboard, then move along.
For everyone else, a new measure of respectability is looming for an Internet pleasure that is both massively popular and, for some people, a bit embarrassing. The Walker Art Center, a well-regarded museum of modern art in Minneapolis, on Thursday is presenting its first Internet Cat Video Film Festival to showcase the best in filmed feline high jinks.
With about 70 videos over 60 minutes, the Walker is mounting a social experiment as much as a film festival. At issue is whether lovers of cat videos accustomed to enjoying the clips in the privacy of their homes will do so in public, and constitute an online community of fellow aficionados interacting face-to-face for the first time.
