Everson Museum: Video and the Museum Conference

Videofreex members Davidson Gigliotti, Bart Friedman, Skip Blumberg and Nancy Cain travel to Syracuse, New York to attend an exhibition and two-day conference featuring video art at the Everson Museum of Art held from April 4-7, 1974. More than simply recording this event known formally as “Video and the Museum,” the tape poignantly highlights the ways in which the Freex—by wielding a video camera—simultaneously become art world archivists, video collaborators, and on-the-ground reporters of culture and art in the 1970s.

The range of events and social encounters documented on this tape makes it an especially rich historical object: it includes an excerpt of a live keynote lecture, art world socialites mingling during the opening and dinner receptions, and candid interviews with artists, such as Nam June Paik and Andy Mann, whose work appeared in the exhibition. Shots of the video art in situ at the Everson Museum also provide invaluable insight into the presentation and reception of this genre of art just as it was emerging. Finally, intimate cameos of Barry Rebo, Carlotta Schoolman, Peter Campus, and Kenneth Marsh, among others, make tangible the bonds linking these individuals, whose interests and collaborations significantly shaped early video and its curation during the 1970s.

— Faye Gleisser