Barbara London

Barbara London

Barbra London presented a lot of great work and explained a lot about what she does as an art curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  She first talked about the progression of technology and image capturing, going from the Instamatic camera all the way to the cellular phone today.  She then proceeded to discuss the art work and progression of Nam June Paik.  Nam June Paik was one of the first to start working with television sets.  Many of his pieces were interactive so that you could interact and change the modified televisions he would have on display.  One of his great works that London talked about was the television with the candle inside.  What was interesting about this is that it related all the way back to Renaissance art.  Many times this implementation is related to mortality, which is extremely different to include this message in such serious and popular piece of technology.  London then explained how Paik acquired his first video camera and started making music videos.   The video London showed of Paik’s Beatles Electronique was quite interesting.  It seemed to be very loud and unsettling.  However, it is always pleasing to see where such a big industry in today's society started from. 

London’s lecture continued to touch on artist like David Bowie and Captain Beefheart.  Following these artists was the anonymous group called Residents.  This group was significant because they were one of the only groups to control their visuals with a copyright, meaning they could work with anything without needing permission.   A video on one of their works was also played.  After this group London talked about Laurie Anderson and presented one of her Personal Service Announcements. 

While all of this was great information, all these artist and art works were related back to her current display of Looking at Music 3.0 in the Museum of Modern Art.  This display is a full history of recordings, classic records, the development of music and videos, and many of the artists, like Cey Adams, that had a significant influence in this field of art. 

Overall, her presentation was very well done and very informative. London is fortunate enough to meet many of these great, influential artists in her work; she also has the opportunity to talk to them and get to know them personally.  She is very knowledgeable in the art field because she is around this so much and has the opportunity to learn more as she continues this type of work.