Developing Strategies for the Conservation of Installations Incorporating Time-Based Media: Gary Hill's "Between Cinema and a Hard Place"

Since the early 1990s Tate has been working to establish standards of care for the conservation of artworks which incorporate film, video and audio. In this paper I discuss the strategies we are developing and the approach to the conservation of time-based media with reference to a particularly complex installation, Gary Hill's Between Cinema and a Hard Place 1991.

The Conservation and Documentation of Video Art

At the Tate Gallery, London, we have developed a special approach to the conservation of video art works (some general guidelines are given in Appendix I). Most of the conservation literature relat- ing to video has been written for archives and those responsible for vast collections of material. Although information about the structure of tape, its storage and its deterioration is applicable to any video collection, there are important differences between the care of art works and the care of archive material. The focus of this article is the conservation of video as art.

The Management of Display Equipment in Time-based Media Installations

Display equipment warrants special attention because it presents specific challenges to our ability to display these works in the future as the artist intended. Assigning significance to components of the installation is independent of the museum?s ability to preserve what is valued.

Toward Guidelines for Practice in the Preservation and Documentation of Technology-based Installation Art

This article describes the preservation challenges inherent to this medium, summarizes the current state of conservation practice in the field, and suggests broad guidelines and stan- dards.It is a result of TechArchaeology:A Symposium on Installation Art Preservation,sponsored by the Bay Area Video Coalition, hosted by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and funded by the Getty Grant Program.