BOSTON, MASS.- Emerson Urban Arts: Media Art Gallery is presenting a new exhibition that surveys the development of broadcast television as an artistic medium from the 1950s to the 1977 Documenta contemporary art exhibit in Germany.

In the 1950s and 1960s, when broadcast television was in its formative stage of program development, postwar artists became interested in the medium as a way to reach more people than through exhibition or installation. This idealistic “Vision of Television” is the conceptual foundation for understanding a period of experimental artists’ television programming in Europe and the United States that was first initiated by public television program broadcasts by WGBH-Boston and West German Broadcasting (WDR).

The exhibit is one of a handful of exhibits planned by the gallery’s late Director and Emerson’s Henry and Lois Foster Chair in Contemporary Art, Joseph D. Ketner II. This research also culminated in his most recent book, Witness to Phenomenon: Ground ZERO and the Development of New Media in Postwar European Art.

“We are pleased to bring one of Joe’s last exhibits to life and to honor his work around the early development of artists’ involvement with television broadcasts during its nascent stage,” said Robert Sabal, Dean, Emerson College School of the Arts, who added that the exhibit also commemorates the 50th anniversary of landmark broadcasts by the two public broadcasting stations, WDR, Black Gate Cologne, and WGBH-Boston and The Medium is the Medium.

These innovative artists’ television broadcasts helped uncover a new world of postwar art and opened the door for many artists of this generation to gain access to broadcast networks to produce imaginative programming. Those artists included Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, Otto Piene, Aldo Tambellini and Stan VanDerBeek.