Beryl Korot

Beryl Korot is an internationally exhibited artist first known for her early pioneer work in video art, and for multiple channel work in particular. She was co-founder and co-editor of Radical Software (1970), the first publication to document artists' work and ideas concerning video, and in l976 she co-edited Video Art with Ira Schneider, published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Her most recent video work for music theatre is created entirely on computer.

In the Fall 2001, a short work commissioned by Art 21 will appear on PBS as part of a new series on contemporary artists, and Dachau 1974 will be part of an historical exhibition at the Whitney Museum "Into the Light," mid-October to mid-December.

Korot's early multiple channel installation works: the 4 channel Dachau 1974 and Text and Commentary, (1977) a 5 channel video work which incorporated drawings, weavings and notations, pioneered the creation of the non-verbal narrative. These works were featured for a month at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1980 as "important in video history for their formal articulation of multi-monitor image structure and the integration of the video image with other media."

Exhibitions of either of these two works at the Massachusetts College of Art (1999), Kolnischer Kunstverein, Koln (1989) Neuen Berliner Kunstverein (1989), Kunsthaus Zurich (1989), Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pa. (1990), The Jewish Museum of Art, NYC (1988), Long Beach Museum of Art, CA. (1988), Musee des Beaux Arts, Montreal (1980), San Francisco Art Institute (1981), The Leo Castelli Gallery (1977), Documenta 6, Kassel, Germany (1977), The Kitchen (1974), Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY (1975 and 1979). In 1978 the "Videoviewpoints" series at the Museum of Modern Art featured a presentation of both Dachau 1974 and Text and Commentary.

From 1989 to 1993, Beryl Korot worked full-time on the multiple channel performance work, The Cave, which she conceived and developed in collaboration with composer Steve Reich. This work has been performed in Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam, New York City, London, Paris, Brussels,Turin and in Tokyo. The installation of the work was exhibited at The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and traveled in 1994/95 to European museums in DŸsseldorf, Germany; Madrid, Spain; Lille, France; and to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pa.. Most recently it was seen in the ICC Gallery in Tokyo. At present, a new collaboration with Steve Reich called Three Tales, has been presented in Bonn in June, 97 as a work in progress, as well as in the Fall, 97 in Paris, Vienna, Amsterdam, Berlin and London. Act 1 of Three Tales, "Hindenburg," was performed at the Spoleto Festival in South Carolina in May 98, and in Munich and New York at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Fall, 98. It was also exhibited as a large projection installation at the Massachusetts College of Art in Jan./Feb. 1999 and as part of the American Century exhibition at the Whitney Museum in February 2000. It was also presented in a lecture format in the Spring of 1999 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Between 1980 and 1988 she devoted herself fulltime to oil painting, creating works on handwoven and traditional linen canvas. These were paintings based on a language she created which were an analog to the Latin alphabet. A room in this abstract language was created illuminating the Babel story, as well as other texts. Some of these works were seen at The Carnegie Museum (1990), and in solo exhibition in the Project Room, John Weber Gallery, New York City, in 1986.

In addition to the installations and publications, in 1972, with a grant from America the Beautiful Fund, she conducted the first cablecast to the town of Saugerties, New York with a group of high school students. Her early single channel works were seen at the Whitney Biennial (1975), the Kennedy Center "Art Now"(1974) , the Sao Paulo Bienial (1975) The Finch College Museum (1972), to name a few. In the Fall, 1993, these early tapes were included as part of a new touring exhibition sponsored by ICI in New York City called "The First Generation: Women in Video 1970-75." Dachau 1974 was featured in the 1976 PBS program on video art hosted by Russell Connor.

Over the past twenty five years she has received numerous grants from the National Endowment on the Arts (1975, 77, 79), the New York State Council on the Arts (1973-4, 1978) the Creative Artists Public Service Fund (l972, 1975 and 1978) and for her work on The Cave from The Rockefeller Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation, the National Endowment on the Arts, and The Nathan Cummings Foundation. In 1994 she was awarded a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. For her new work with Steve Reich, Three Tales, foundation support has been received from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Rockefeller Foundation. In March/April, 2000, she and Steve Reich were Montgomery Fellows at Dartmouth College.