The foundation, located in a historic SoHo loft, preserves the living and working space of pioneering video artists Shigeko Kubota (1937–2015) and Nam June Paik (1932–2006), who occupied the space from the 1970s until 2015. The raw loft space remains largely unchanged since the artists' time there, with approximately 80 percent dedicated to artmaking and featuring their original video works, archives, and personal effects displayed in their original positions. As one of the last remaining "Fluxhouses"—artist cooperative buildings established by Fluxus founder George Maciunas—the site offers visitors a rare glimpse into both the birth of video art and SoHo's transformation into an artists' community through by-appointment tours that include access to extensive multi-media sculpture, video, photo, and paper archives.
Shigeko Kubota (1937-2015) is renowned as a pioneering Video Artist who additionally and dedicated herself to become recognized as an especially significant early progenitor of this new medium by taking multifaceted roles as artist, curator, critic and essayist.
Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation (SKVAF) preserves her artworks and oeuvre, and pursues and propagates her cultural legacy developing and supporting programs to develop wider awareness, appreciation and understanding of the history and future of video art.
Guided by documentation of both Kubota and Paik’s wishes, SKVAF was established as a foundation to preserve Kubota’s collection of Fluxus materials and video artworks, in addition to the personal studio archive of both Kubota and Paik. Their Mercer Street loft, now SKVAF foundation headquarters, strives to work as they worked and lived, by providing a nexus for bringing together video art colleagues, scholars, collaborators, committed to propagating Video Art’s roots and ever expanding new branches.
Credit: Overview from museum website