[spectre] Nam June Paik Archive Goes to the Smithsonian

[Andreas Broeckmann]

from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/arts/design/01voge.html?_r=3


Nam June Paik Archive Goes to the Smithsonian

Clunky black-and-white television sets and 1960s record players; 
early video projectors and decades-old Polaroid cameras - things that 
were long ago relegated to the electronic graveyard - are precious 
and priceless in the world created by the artist Nam June Paik 
(1932-2006).

Mr. Paik, who pioneered video art, spent more than five decades 
creating an idiosyncratic variety of works, including robots, musical 
compositions, video sculptures and installations. Coining the phrase 
the "electronic superhighway" in 1974, he saw the artistic 
possibilities of technology long before most people.

So receiving Mr. Paik's coveted archives as a gift from the artist's 
estate is the art world equivalent of winning the lottery. The estate 
asked a group of museums for proposals on how each would use the 
archive. Out of a group that included the Museum of Modern Art, the 
J. Paul Getty Museum, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the 
Whitney Museum of American Art, it chose the Smithsonian American Art 
Museum.