The purpose of this study is to analyze media art exhibitions that Barbara
London has been planning at MoMA for 40 years and to study the results of
media art exhibitions in Barbara London, which developed and expanded media
art from the beginning. Ba...
The purpose of this study is to analyze media art exhibitions that Barbara
London has been planning at MoMA for 40 years and to study the results of
media art exhibitions in Barbara London, which developed and expanded media
art from the beginning. Barbara London has been a curator who has led
MoMA's media art exhibition and program since the 1970s by discovering the
possibility of media art, and has brought media scalability by planning media art
exhibitions such as sound art, video art, and net art in MoMA centered on fine
art.
Chapter 2 analyzes the background and changes at the time of the emergence
of media art media. First, the mixed concepts in the use of the term 'media' are
summarized and the differences from 'new media' are described. As an 'early'
media art curator, the term 'media' rather than 'new media' was used for the
purpose of this study to analyze Barbara London. By analyzing the background
and changes of the times according to the appearance of media art, the purpose
of the exhibition developed from simple work listing to educational and
communication purposes, and the increase in audience-participating works led to
changes in the way of installing and appreciating works.
Chapter 3 derived media analysis of the MoMA media art exhibition planning
in Barbara London. Sound Art: Visualization of musical elements, Video Art:
Realization of timeliness and interactivity, and presentation of online exhibition
and archiving directions. First, the visualization of the musical elements of
sound art was analyzed that sound was brought into the exhibition hall to
create a place where art and music were exchanged. Representative examples
were "Sound Art" in 1979 and "Sounding: A Contemporary Score" in 2013. The
"Sound Art" exhibition is the first example of incorporating the term ‘sound art’
into MoMA, and "Sounding: A Contemporary Score" is considered the first
large-scale sound art exhibition of MoMA.
The second is the realization of timeliness and interactivity of video art. Video
art artists' individual exhibitions were held more than 30 times out of 56
exhibitions, and representative video art artists Bill Viola(1951- ), Nam June
Paik(1932-2006), and Dan Graham(1942-2022) were selected to analyze howvideo art's characteristics of timeliness and interactivity were implemented in
the exhibition.
A third example of presentation of online exhibition and archiving directions
was the series "A Video Curator's Dispatch", which has been held in China,
Russia and Ukraine, Japan since 1999, and the case of net art, "Tony Usler:
Timestream". In the case of "Video Curator's Dispatch", the onlineization of
art-related content took place at a time when it was not active, and the
non-mainstream nature of net art was all suggested as a practice of curriculum.
Chapter 4 derived the results of the MoMA media art exhibition planning in
Barbara London as an early media art curator. First, by presenting the media
art methodology, the use of black boxes, headsets, and earphones, which were
traditional media art installation practices, was avoided, museum fatigue was
alleviated, and it was expanded outdoors and online. In other words, Barbara
London tried to provide visitors with a new environment and experience.
Second, with the advent of the World Wide Web(WWW) era in 1989, with the
initial construction of online exhibition and archiving, a new type of online
exhibition and archiving was established amid the expansion of one-man media
due to the emergence of personal laptops. Third, with the lighting of Asian
media art, media art in Asia, which had few cultural exchanges such as China
and Japan, was easily accessible online, and efforts were made to dismantle the
Western-centered perspective. Fourth, in charge of media-related programs and
collections, MoMA media art contents were diversified and diversified.
Compared to media art exhibitions and online contents that are currently
explosively developed and in progress, exhibition planning and curator research
were insufficient, and mainly focused on art history and artist research.
Therefore, by analyzing the exhibition planning performance of Barbara London
from the beginning to the present, it is expected that it will have a positive
effect on the paradigm shift in the art world in the future as an early example
of media art.