In conjunction with the exhibition Spectacle: The Music Video-which closes in eleven days on Sunday, June 16-Museum of the Moving Image will present a final round of related programs including personal apearances by music artists and filmmakers Woodkid (a.k.a. Yoann Lemoine) (June 15), Jem Cohen (June 7), and Fugazi band member Guy Picciotto (June 7), as well as the groundbreaking television executive Bob Pittman (June 5), who was a founder of and programmer for MTV. In the screening series Play This Movie Loud!, organized to accompany Spectacle, the Museum will screen Cohen's Fugazi documentary Instrument; Lars Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark, featuring Björk; and a double feature of Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense (Talking Heads) and David Byrne's True Stories. Additional programs include the live storytelling event The Soundtrack Series (June 14) featuring music writer Maura Johnston and other guests, and the panel discussion Hip-Hop in the YouTube Age (June 8), moderated by radio host and media activist Harry Allen. A complete schedule of programs is included below; many of these events are free with Museum admission.
For families, the Museum will also present sessions of the Animated Music Video workshop on Saturday and Sunday, June 15 and 16. In this 90-minute workshop, children (ages 8+) will have the opportunity to create their own music video using some of the same materials and techniques featured in videos on view in Spectacle.
Since it opened on April 3, 2013, Spectacle: The Music Video has received wide and enthusiastic praise: "a dizzyingly comprehensive, highly engaging, and refreshingly unpretentious look at history's most innovative and boundary-pushing videos" (Creators Project), "vivid and innovative" (Time Out New York), "a stunningly comprehensive look at where music videos have been and where they're headed " (Video Static), and as The Village Voice put it, the exhibition "just might make you want your MTV all over again."
Spectacle explores music video as an important and influential art form in contemporary culture and is the most comprehensive museum exhibition on music videos presented to date. The exhibition highlights the form's place at the forefront of creative technology, its role in pushing the boundaries of innovative production, its important role as an experimental sandbox for filmmakers, and its lasting effects on popular culture globally. It features more than 300 videos, presented alongside artifacts and interactive experiences.
Spectacle: The Music Video is curated by Jonathan Wells and Meg Grey Wells of Flux, a global creative community and collective that programs film and art events around the world, and was organized by the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, where it debuted in March 2012. The exhibition at Museum of the Moving Image is presented in partnership with Sonos, the leading manufacturer of wireless audio systems, and VEVO, the world's leading all-premium music video and entertainment platform, with additional support from Adobe and SOL REPUBLIC.
