2 PREVIOUS WORK ON PRESERVATION OF INSTALLATION ART

Previous work on this subject has provided some answers to these dilemmas. Playback: A Preservation Primer for Video, a publication issuing from a 1996 symposium sponsored by the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) (Fifer et al. 1998), and Wie haltbar ist Videokunst? How Durable Is Video Art?(Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg 1997), resulting from a 1995 symposium, are notable examples. Another symposium, TechArchaeology, sponsored by BAVC in January 2000, brought together conservators, artists, curators, and technical experts to examine and discuss several installations in the exhibition Seeing Time: Selections from the Pamela and Richard Kramlich Collection of Media Art(Riley et al. 1999) at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). A number of papers arising from this symposium are published in this issue of the Journal of the American Institute for Conservation (Bishop 2001; Laurenson 2001; Messier 2001; Vitale 2001). The general session of the 2000 AIC Annual Meeting and the Electronic Media Specialty Group sessions from 1997 to 2001, devoted to the subject of conservation of electronic media, included a number of relevant papers (Berry 1999; Eamon 2000; Laurenson 2000; Stauderman 2000; Sterrett 2000). The Variable Media Project symposium at the Guggenheim Museum, March 30–31, 2001, and associated website (Ippolito et al. 2001) proposed an approach to the care and preservation of installation art, with several case studies as examples. Several recent conferences and symposia, with associated publications, focused on the broader preservation issues in contemporary art and included work in the area of installation art and electronic art, such as Modern Art: Who Cares? (Balch 1999; Groenenboom 1999; Hummelen and Sill� 1999; Laurenson 1999a; Pullen 1999; Stringari 1999), Mortality/ Immortality (Corzo 1999; Hanhardt 1999; Viola 1999), and Project “Conservation of Modern Art” (Hummelen 1996; Kuene 1996).