Description

Howard Wise was an innovative art dealer and a visionary supporter of video art. From 1960 to 1970, the Howard Wise Gallery on 57th Street in New York was a locus for kinetic art and multimedia works that explored the nexus of art and technology, presenting artists such as Len Lye, Takis, Jean Tinguely, and Group Zero. Wise's most influential exhibition was TV as a Creative Medium, the first in the U.S. dedicated to video as an art form. Featuring performances, single-channel tapes, video sculpture and multimedia installations by twelve artists including the premiere of Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman's TV Bra for Living Sculpture, the exhibition served to link the kinetic and art and technology movements of the 1960s with the emergent medium of video art. In addition to defining a burgeoning artistic movement, TV as a Creative Medium revealed the need for new paradigms to support artists working in video. In 1970 Wise closed the gallery; the following year he founded Electronic Arts Intermix as a nonprofit organization to foster creative projects in the nascent video medium.

The program included never-before-screened film documentation of kinetic artworks in the gallery, interviews with Wise on the founding of EAI, Jud Yalkut's rarely seen 16mm film documentation of TV as a Creative Medium, footage of Charlotte Moorman performing at the gallery, and more.