Contemporary Arts Center Bjork in a scene from the music video for her song “Wanderlust,†directed by Encyclopedia Pictura.Long before party-goers at New Jersey beaches and dudes who shock themselves with Taser guns were deemed worthy of their own television series, there was the music video: an art form so prolific and diverse that there were whole television channels that ran almost nothing but these short musical films, nearly 24 hours a day.
Times have changed, and while music videos seem rarer, they are revered enough (or old enough) to warrant their own exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. On Tursday the museum announced that it would present “Spectacle: The Music Video,†which will open April 3 and celebrate the form for its “place at the forefront of creative technology, its role in pushing the boundaries of innovative production, its important role as an experimental sandbox for filmmakers and its lasting effects on popular culture globally,†the museum said in a news release.
In addition to displays of well-known and genre-defining videos like Devo’s “Whip It,†Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer,†Madonna’s “Like a Prayer†and “Sabotage†by Beastie Boys, the exhibition will feature items like the original animation drawings made for A-ha’s “Take on Meâ€; the jumpsuits worn by! the band members of OK Go in their video for “This Too Shall Passâ€; an original eyeball and top hat created by Homer Flynn for the Residents; and artwork and objects created for Bjork’s “Wanderlust†(which will be shown in 3-D).
The exhibition, which is curated by Jonathan Wells and Meg Grey Wells of the programming collective Flux, will also include a section on the hip-hop oriented television shows “Video Music Box†and “Yo! MTV Rapsâ€; installations on artists like Arcade Fire, Johnny Cash and Radiohead; and a history on the origins of music videos from the 1920s through the 1960s.
“Spectacle: the Music Video†will run at the Museum of the Moving Image through June 16.
