DV magazine — June 2013
‘Spectacle: The Music Video:’ Assembling the Innovative Interactive Museum Exhibit

The music video, a huge part of youth culture for just about anyone who grew up during the 1980s — the MTV Generation, as the demographic came to be branded — is celebrated as an art form in the exhibition Spectacle: The Music Video, now at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York.

The exhibit, which runs in New York through June 23, originally opened in Cincinnati, Ohio at the Contemporary Arts Center, after which it traveled to Sāo Paulo, Brazil, where it was displayed at the Museum of Image and Sound. It will eventually migrate to Australia, where it will be on display at the Australian Centre for Moving Images in Melbourne from September 26 through March 2, 2014.

Spectacle features over 300 videos by directors including David Fincher, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Mark Romanek and Floria Sigismondi, set pieces and artifacts from videos, and other interactive installations that present the changing landscape of the art of the music video, highlighting the genre’s place at the forefront of creative technology and its role in pushing the boundaries of creative production.

Curated by Jonathan Wells and Meg Grey Wells of creative collective Flux, Spectacle features important examples from music video history, from early pioneers like Devo, the Beastie Boys, Michael Jackson and Madonna, who used the medium to define their public identities, to artists such as Björk and OK Go who follow in their footsteps today.

“We’ve always had a dream to bring the work that we do to a bigger platform,” says Meg, who, along with Jonathan, curates a video series at the Los Angeles Hammer Museum now in its sixth year. “The goal has been to showcase these cultural artifacts in a museum environment.” (Read full story…)