SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA.- The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., announced today the joint acquisition of the work Suspension of Disbelief (for Marine), 1991–92, one of the first examples of sculptural video by media artist Gary Hill. The piece, a video installation comprising thirty monitors set into an aluminum I-beam, is the artist’s proof for an edition of two, and the only example in North America. The work will be on view at SFMOMA from March 25 to May 30, 2005, in an exhibition featuring pieces by Hill sourced from Bay Area collections.

Both institutions have a long standing relationship with Hill’s work. At SFMOMA, Suspension of Disbelief (for Marine) joins three single-channel video works by Hill—Primarily Speaking, 1983, Site Recite, 1989, and Incidence of Catastrophe, 1987–88—already in the Museum’s collection. In 2000, SFMOMA also presented the work Remembering Paralinguay (with Paulina Wallenberg-Olsson), 2000, in the exhibition Double Feature: New Works by Nick Crowe and Gary Hill.

“Gary Hill is a significant figure in the advancement of media art, and Suspension of Disbelief (for Marine) is a particularly compelling example of his work in that it aggregates several of his trademark themes and techniques,” said SFMOMA Director Neal Benezra. “We are honored to join the Hirshhorn in this significant acquisition.”

In 1994 the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden presented the important exhibition Gary Hill, organized by the Henry Art Gallery, which featured nine special installations. “The acquisition of Gary Hill’s Suspension of Disbelief (for Marine) with SFMOMA adds an important work of media-based art by one of the most significant artists practicing in this genre to the Hirshhorn’s outstanding collection of contemporary art. While photography, film and video have not been a part of the Hirshhorn’s efforts in the past, we are now committed to ameliorating our gaps in this crucial area of late twentieth century and early twenty-first century art. We are delighted to partner with SFMOMA, a museum that shares the Hirshhorn’s commitment to collecting, studying, and conserving these dynamic art forms,” added Ned Rifkin, director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Over the past 25 years, Hill has developed a dynamic body of work that reveals influences of both classical art and mass media, incorporating such varied elements as performance, sculpture, and video to explore the concepts of illusion and mediated reality, often via a focus on the human body. In many of his pieces, Hill engages in a complex—sometimes literal—deconstruction of the frame, restaging a video image within sculptural objects.