Leandra-Juliet Kelley

UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, MSc in History of Art, Theory & Display (2019-2020)

During the 1960s, technological innovations altered modern society and its multimedia art practices, resulting in new mediums to explore space, audience interaction, and visual presentation of soundscapes. The artists of these innovative works found a space to shine in New York City’s Howard Wise Gallery, which served as a platform for displaying multimedia art through experiential exhibitions.

Take Two: Ephemerality and the Reproduction of Multimedia Art Exhibitions by the Howard Wise Gallery examines the curatorial practices involved in re-staging key exhibitions from this integral arts institution: Lights in Orbit (1967) at the Howard Wise Gallery and its expanded version Light/Motion/Space (1967), and the pivotal exhibition TV as a Creative Medium (1969) held at the Wise Gallery alongside the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1994 tribute and partial-reconstruction The Howard Wise Gallery: TV as a Creative Medium, 1969. The exhibitions selected explored multimedia art while inviting visitors to immerse themselves in the spectacle. Three ephemeral display practices arise in the first instalments of these selected exhibitions (i.e. Lights in Orbit and TV as a Creative Medium): 1) viewer as participant, providing guests with a sense of agency in the artistic experience; 2) abstraction display techniques, creating a holistic, visual environment from individual forms or artworks; and 3) the multisensory effect which stems from abstract-based display practices.

Take Two examines the transferability of these ephemeral display practices in an exhibition’s re-staging, analysing the show’s ability to not only exhibit dynamic multimedia artworks, but reproduce the sensory milieu of these experiences. To coincide with conservation efforts for multimedia art, equal research and consideration is necessary for preserving the unique, experiential elements which often accompanied these artworks.