The first museum survey to examine television as a form and forum for contemporary arts, the exhibition featured one hundred and two artists from Europe and North America.
The works in The Arts for Television ranged in duration from three minutes to over an hour and comprised alternative or experimental programs produced specifically for TV. For the exhibition, they were screened in six sections highlighting the intersection of video with other artistic mediums: “Dance for Television,” “Music for Television,” “Theatre for Television,” “Literature for Television”, “The Video Image” (works that referenced the traditional visual arts), and “Not Necessarily Television” (works that critically transformed more conventional TV use). Artists in the show included Laurie Anderson, Samuel Beckett, Merce Cunningham, Joan Jonas, Shigeko Kubota, Robert Longo, Nam June Paik, Martha Rosler, Richard Serra, Bill Viola, and many more. and The Arts for Television traveled to over a dozen institutions between 1988 and 1989.
The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue.The Arts for Television was organized by Kathy Rae Huffman, the Contemporary Art Television Fund, Boston, Dorine Mignot of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, with Julie Lazar, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.