New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has announced plans to display the original set of 176 emojis used widely around the world as part of its permanent collection.

Starting in December, MoMA will showcase its emoji library either as wallpaper or silkscreens in the museum lobby.

The emojis from Japanese mobile carrier Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT DOCOMO) were created by developer Shigetaka Kurita on a base grid of 12x12 pixels. The designs proved popular in Japan when they were created in 1999, with the trend later catching on worldwide, joining the Apple iOS service by 2011.

This isn’t the first time MoMA has recognised alternate text and imagery as art, having six years ago added the “@” symbol to its collection thanks to its “design power.”

"Emojis as a concept go back in the centuries, to ideograms, hieroglyphs, and other graphic characters, enabling us to draw this beautiful arch that covers all of human history," said Paola Antonelli, senior curator at MoMA's Department of Architecture and Design, speaking to Wired. "There is nothing more modern than timeless concepts such as these."