Media Arts Lectures at SAAM Start Tomorrow May 14, 2007

Nam June Paik; Zen for TV; 1963, 1976 version; manipulated vintage television and components; 19 x 22 1/2 x 18 in.; Smithsonian American Art Museum; Gift of Byungseol and Dolores An; 2006.20

Tuesday, May 15, John Hanhardt, SAAM's new Senior Media Arts Curator, begins his lecture series about the history and directions of media arts in the U.S. We on the Web team are pretty excited about having John as a colleague and though he's quite well known in the field this is a bit of a coming out for him and SAAM's media arts program in DC.

In John's words:

It is clear that the cinema and moving image technologies have had a large impact on artmaking over the Twentieth Century and that we are becoming a media culture. These talks offer an introduction to these issues by reflecting on the history of film, video and new interactive media as artforms covering the period from the 1940s to today.

These are being billed as “multi-media” talks which means that we’re going to see lots of film clips and images.

The lectures are:

• May 15: The Avant-Garde Film and Installation Art (1943-1975)
• May 22: The Emergence of Video Art (1963-1975)
• May 29: The Expanded Forms of Video Art (1975-1990)
• June 5: Contemporary Video and Multimedia Art Practices: A Critical Survey (1990-2006)

• John Hanhardt, Media Arts, Film, Video Art, Installation Art, American Art,
  Smithsonian American Art Museum