TV Museum takes as its subject the complex and shifting relationship between television and contemporary art. Informed by theories and histories of art and media since the 1950s, this book charts the changing status of television as cultural form, object of critique and site of artistic invention. Through close readings of artworks, exhibitions and institutional practices in diverse cultural and political contexts, Connolly demonstrates television's continued importance for contemporary artists and curators seeking to question the formation and future of the public sphere. Paying particular attention to developments since the early 2000s, TV Museum includes chapters on exhibiting television as object; soaps, sitcoms and symbolic value in art and television; reality TV and the social turn in art; TV archives, memory, and media events; broadcasting and the public realm; TV talk shows and curatorial practice; art workers and TV production cultures.

Maeve Connolly co-directs the MA in Art & Research Collaboration at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dublin. Her recent writing includes contributions to Expanding Cinema: Theorizing Film through Contemporary Art (Amsterdam University Press, 2020), Everything Is Somewhere Else (Paper Visual Art, 2020) and Artists' Moving Image in Britain since 1989 (Paul Mellon Centre and Yale University Press, 2019).

Introduction: Contemporary Art and the Age of Television

Chapter One: Sets, Screens and Social Spaces: Exhibiting Television

Chapter Two: Quality Television and Contemporary Art: Soaps, Sitcoms and Symbolic Value

Chapter Three: Reality TV, Delegated Performance and the Social Turn

Chapter Four: European Television Archives, Collective Memories and Contemporary Art

Chapter Five: Monuments to Broadcasting: Television and Art in the Public Realm

Chapter Six: Talk Shows: Art Institutions and the Discourse of Publicness

Chapter Seven: Production on Display: Television, Labour and Contemporary Art

Conclusion: Contemporary Art After Television