Exchange and Evolution: Worldwide Video Long Beach 1974-1999

Exchange and Evolution, a retrospective selection of the significant international video works and artists who were part of the historic video art program at the Long Beach Museum of Art, is on view at the Museum through February 12, 2012. The exhibition is the result of research into the numerous cultural exchanges, and the subsequent evolution of ideas made possible by the Museum’s media art center. For 25 years, this media art center provided consistent support for artists worldwide. Exchange and Evolution establishes LBMA as a key influence on the growth and development of video as an art form. The exhibition features both single-channel video and installations by artists from eighteen different countries, whose work provides an overview of the history of video art and its expressive abilities. Works from the early 1970s that provide a perspective on the potential of the then experimental medium are shown along with more technologically developed works from the end of the twentieth century. 

A program that encompassed a wide range of video concerns, the LBMA played a key role in building the theoretical integrity of the new art form. Artists frequently premiered innovative “alternative” television technology to Museum audiences in the galleries and on cable television programs produced by LBMA Video. The works included in Exchange and Evolution include technical experimentation, performance, personal histories, feminist and political perspectives, documentary and experimental narrative, as well as international perspectives on contemporary art and culture.