Two important video art collections have been donated to the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, housed in the Cornell Library's Division of Rare and Special Manuscript Collections.

The donations -- the Elayne Zalis Video Studies Archive, documenting 25 years of American video art production, and ETC: Experimental Television Center Archives, featuring works by the first generation of video and film artists -- join the Goldsen Archive's substantial holdings of American new media art, Chinese and Taiwanese avant-garde art, Internet art and more.

Goldsen curator Timothy Murray said that he expects these new collections, along with recently acquired video art collections from Taiwan, Germany and Japan, to position the Goldsen Archive at the forefront of international research in video art.

To celebrate the new collections, the Goldsen Archive hosts a public workshop, "Video Art: Practice, History and Archive," April 13, 1-6 p.m., with artists, archivists and scholars.

The ETC Archives represent the creative output of visual and sonic investigation by artists from around the world, including digitally preserved video art originally recorded on obsolete formats, and digitized tapes and ephemera from electronic media work by the more than 100 artists who participated in ETC's Residency Program in Owego, N.Y., over the last 40 years.

The archives offer a look at the evolution of the unique artist-designed sound and image tools that are hallmarks of the center's studio, and provide a view into constantly changing artistic processes and practices that have shaped experimentation in video art over the years. The works have been widely exhibited and awarded internationally, and the archive includes a 10-DVD anthology, "ETC: Experimental Television Center 1969-2009."

The Zalis Archive is an extensive collection of study tapes, rare catalogs and correspondence documenting the history of American video art from 1977 to 1992. The materials were curated and donated by Elayne Zalis, who used them as background for her Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Iowa on humanities and the media arts.

As one of the most cohesive study collections on American video art in the country, it includes 150 video tapes available for reference, a wide range of original exhibition catalogs and monographs on national and international video art, and research materials on independent distributors, festivals and media centers in the 1980s. The archive documents the work of individual artists and agencies, while providing a snapshot of the history of independent video art, its production, exhibition and critical evaluation. It also includes manuscripts and printed editions of Zalis' multimedia quartet, "Recycled Memories."

The April 13 workshop will feature Zalis and ETC co-director Sherry Miller Hocking, presenting the history behind the collections at 1:30 p.m. in Kroch Library. A panel discussion, "Video Art: Practice in and Through the Finger Lakes," at 3 p.m. in the A.D. White House, will include visiting assistant professor of art Renate Ferro, Barbara Lattanzi of Alfred University and media artist Philip Mallory Jones, co-founder and director of Ithaca Video Projects from 1971 to 1985. The panel precedes a plenary lecture, "Anarchives: Project and Process," by Anne-Marie Duguet of the Sorbonne, Paris.

The workshop is presented in collaboration with the Mellon Central New York Humanities Corridor, the Society for the Humanities and the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival.

The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art is an experimental center of research and creativity, emphasizing digital and electronic interfaces for experimentation by international artists. For more information, contact Murray at tcm1@cornell.edu.