TV Museum

Scholarship on the art world is encounter with television takes a massive step forward with the publication of TV Museum. In this original and intelligent book, Maeve Connolly lays out a comprehensive anatomy of the shape this encounter has taken in recent decades, focusing not only on artists but also on curators, cultural agencies, and community organizations. Her research base is international in scope, her prose is concise and lucid, and her analysis has a freshness that readers will appreciate. This book leads the field beyond overly familiar binaries ñ high vs. low, authoritarianism vs. democracy ñ by showing that working professionals in contemporary art do not treat TV as a singular apparatus or set of effects. It is at once a physical object, an audiovisual archive, a source of entertainment, a business model, and a public purveyor of history, and Connolly is thoughtful analysis traces the kinds of work that are made possible as artists, curators, museum directors, and gallerists increasingly acknowledge television in all these forms. This visually stunning book promises to be the authoritative text on the incorporation of television and art for a very long time.