Media Preservation Initiative
Launched in 2018, the Media Preservation Initiative (MPI) was a multi-disciplinary project instituted to address the conservation needs of the Whitney’s time-based media collection. This three-year project focused on 800 permanent collection works across an array of mediums—film, video, audio, 35mm slide installations, and digital art—developing new cataloguing standards, rehousing physical media, providing illuminating historical and technical research, and instituting an innovative digital preservation pipeline for the long-term safeguarding of media artworks.
Nam June Paik, Fin de Siecle II, 1989. Video installation, 207 television sets with seven video channels, 168 × 480 × 60 in. (426.7 × 1219.2 × 152.4 cm). Gift of Laila and Thurston Twigg-Smith. © Nam June Paik Estate
MPI Survey: The Whitney’s Works on Flash Drives
When the Media Preservation Initiative first launched, initial surveys of the Whitney’s media collection focused on works whose media carriers are considered the most at-risk formats. Despite being some of the newest technologies in the collection, flash memory drives were quickly identified as a high priority. In November and December 2018, Savannah Campbell, MPI’s Video and Digital Media Preservation Specialist, began an assessment of the USB flash drives in the collection.
MPI Case Study: Re-cataloguing Nam June Paik’s Magnet TV
In support of the Whitney’s ongoing conservation efforts, MPI is re-cataloguing and providing additional descriptive data for all of the Museum’s time-based media holdings. These tasks include photographing and relabeling artwork components, as well as certifying that catalogue records are accurate and adhere to current standards. As a prime example of this undertaking, in the fall of 2019, MPI staff re-catalogued Nam June Paik’s landmark video sculpture Magnet TV (1965).
MPI Documentation Templates
As part of MPI’s commitment to sharing its work with colleagues in the museum, library, archives, and gallery worlds, our newly created templates for documenting time-based media (TBM) artworks are available here for consultation and sampling. These include: questionnaires to be filled out by artists or their representatives during the acquisition process; media reports to be completed by internal Whitney staff in order to capture aesthetic, physical, and technical information about a work and its individual installations; and condition reports for substantively recording physical and preservation metadata on media components.
