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Perspectives on New Media in Museums

Nam June Paik and Otto Piene, Untitled, 1968. Manipulated television set and plastic pearls . Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of the Junior Associates of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Greenwich Collection Ltd. Fund, and gift of Margot Ernst, 124.2000. © 2018 Estate of Nam June Paik. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.

Lecture

Harvard Art Museums
32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA

This event was recorded. Please view the lecture here.

Kate Lewis, the Agnes Gund Chief Conservator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, will discuss the challenges of caring for time-based media art. Conservators must grapple with technical obsolescence, navigate complex hardware and software, and satisfy unusual installation demands. Lewis will focus on works by Nam June Paik, Nalini Malani, Tania Bruguera, and others.

Following her talk, Lewis will be joined by Mary Schneider Enriquez, the Houghton Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and Marina Isgro, the inaugural Nam June Paik Research Fellow at the Harvard Art Museums, for a conversation about new media in museums.

This lecture is offered in conjunction with the exhibition Nam June Paik: Screen Play, which celebrates a recent gift from Paik’s nephew and Harvard alumnus Ken Hakuta (M.B.A. ’77). Hakuta donated nine works by Paik to the museums and established the Nam June Paik Research Fellowship, making the Harvard Art Museums an important repository of the artist’s work for exhibition, study, and research.

The lecture will take place in Menschel Hall, Lower Level. Please enter the museums via the entrance on Broadway. Doors will open at 5:30pm.

Free admission, but seating is limited. Tickets will be distributed beginning at 5:30pm at the Broadway entrance. One ticket per person.

After the talk, guests are invited to view the Nam June Paik: Screen Play exhibition on Level 3 until 8pm.

Complimentary parking is available in the Oxford Street Garage, located at 52 Oxford Street, Cambridge.

Support for the lecture is provided by the M. Victor Leventritt Fund, which was established through the generosity of the wife, children, and friends of the late M. Victor Leventritt, Harvard Class of 1935. The purpose of the fund is to present outstanding scholars of the history and theory of art to the Harvard and Greater Boston communities.

Support for Nam June Paik: Screen Play and related programming was provided by the Rosenblatt Fund for Post-War American Art, the Agnes Gund Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art, the José Soriano Fund, and the M. Victor Leventritt Fund. In addition, modern and contemporary art programs at the Harvard Art Museums are made possible in part by generous support from the Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art.