Generations: Experimental Video and the de Saisset Museum

During the early to mid 1970s, under the leadership of visionary director Lydia Modi-Vitale and video curator George Bolling, the de Saisset Museum played a leading role in commissioning and exhibiting video art. A series of solo and group exhibitions during this era helped cement video as a legitimate art form. Generations: Experimental Video and the de Saisset Museum explores this highly productive moment. Related material from experimental exhibitions such as Fish/Fox/Kos (1971) and Eat Your Totems Mary Ashley (1975) offers new perspectives on this Northern California story. This exhibition revisits select works from the twelfth edition of the Museum’s annual St. Jude Invitational in 1972, which focused exclusively on video and featured diverse approaches to the new medium by a number of artists and collectives such as John Baldessari, Lynda Benglis, Terry Fox, Howard Fried, Paul Kos, and Rainbow Video (Viola, Munroe, Morris), among others. The exhibition brought the first generation of Bay Area conceptual artists into conversation with their Los Angeles and New York-based counterparts. On the occasion of the region-wide Further Triennial in Spring 2027, this presentation of historic and rarely-seen performance-based works is paired with a gallery spotlight on single-channel videos by contemporary Bay Area artists. From the studio environment to outdoor landscapes, these short works, primarily from the 2000-2010s, are characterized by their pared down approach to the medium, using the camera to record a performance or action. 

Generations: Experimental Video and the de Saisset Museum is co-organized by Ciara Ennis, Director & Chief Curator, de Saisset Museum and Tanya Zimbardo, guest co-curator.

This exhibition is offered as part of the Bay Area Further Triennial