The Problematic of Video Art in the Museum, 1968–1990 By Cyrus M ...

by the corporate body (museum). Major art institutions would frequently attempt to duplicate works in order to extend the breadth of commercialisation from works of video art. Discrepancies between ownership and authorship would provide conflicting forms of control over the works. The nature of instability of the medium provides a didactic example of the ethics of art collection—one which is peculiar to video art. In any case, many of these works after the 1960s and 1970s would be technically irretrievable due to the disintegration of tape quality.⁸⁴

Notes on the Book's Methodology

The specific period this book looks at will be used as a paradigm through which to undertake a global assessment of the problems posed by video art. This period of avant-garde and contemporary art exhibition within the art museum's more recent history charts the rise of video art's prominence in the museum/gallery during the High Modernist period. To do this, this book examines the specific “flavour” of each institution and how that was altered during the video art period. It will, therefore, present a specific and explicit case study of four prominent public art institutions’ methods and mechanisms of operation in relation to the exhibition and acquisition of recent video art. In so doing, it is the telos of this book to examine a facet of institutionalised change through the example of a problematic form of contemporary art.

Comparisons within and between MoMA and other institutional methods of display are made within this book. Specific video-based works will be analysed in order to make an assessment of their presentation in the museum. Graham's video installations, for instance, present us with a good example which illuminates the tract of development between contexts—institutions and periods. His work is represented in the collections of both European and U.S. institutions. He has also had retrospective exhibitions at numerous institutions, including all four analysed within this book.⁸⁵ Through an analysis of Graham's various exhibitions, I intend to illuminate the varied methods that would need to be utilised for their presentation, and examine the problematic that this presented