Dara Nan Birnbaum (October 29, 1946 – May 2, 2025) was an American

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

and

installation art Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific art, site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior intervent ...

ist based in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. Birnbaum entered the nascent field of video art in the mid-to-late 1970s, challenging the gendered biases of the period and television’s ever-growing presence within the American household. Her oeuvre primarily addresses ideological and aesthetic features of

mass media Mass media include the diverse arrays of media that reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit information electronically via media such as films, radio, recorded music, or television. Digital media comprises b ...

through the intersection of video art, YouTube and

television Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

. She used video to reconstruct television imagery using as materials such archetypal formats as quizzes,

soap operas A soap opera (also called a daytime drama or soap) is a genre of a long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term ''soap opera'' originated from radio dramas original ...

, and sports programmes. The foundation of her work uses techniques which involve the repetition of images and interruption of flow with text and music. She was also well known for having formed part of the

feminist art movement The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to produce feminist art, art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and perception of co ...

that emerged within video art in the mid-1970s.

Early life and education

Dara Nan Birnbaum was born on October 29, 1946, in

Queens Queens is the largest by area of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located near the western end of Long Island, it is bordered by the ...

, New York."Birnbaum Biography"
, Marian Goodman Gallery, Retrieved 31 October 2018. She was the daughter of architect Philip Birnbaum and pathologist Mary Birnbaum. Birnbaum was Jewish, and attended a high school with mostly Jewish peers. In 1969 she received her BArch in architecture at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

. She subsequently worked in the Lawrence Halprin & Associates architectural firm in San Francisco. Her work with the firm instilled a lifelong consideration of civic space and exploration of the relationship between private and public spheres in mass culture. In 1973, Birnbaum attained a BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Career and artistic practice

In 1974, Birnbaum moved to

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

for a year and was introduced to video art by the Centro Diffusione Grafica, a gallery that encouraged its artists to explore video very early on. Shortly after her return to

in 1975, Birnbaum met Dan Graham, a visual artist, writer, and curator who greatly impacted her artistic development. He introduced her to ''Screen'', a British

film theory Film theory is a set of scholarly approaches within the academic discipline of film or cinema studies that began in the 1920s by questioning the formal essential attributes of motion pictures; and that now provides conceptual frameworks for und ...

journal, which provided a critical analysis of mainstream cinema during the 1970s. Birnbaum was very interested in the journal’s discussion of an emerging

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

context in the critique of cinema, but found ''Screen'' to be flawed in its failure to consider

— a medium she believed to have replaced film as the dominant force of American mass culture. During the mid-1970s, the poet, writer, and theoretician Alan Sondheim lent Birnbaum his Sony Portapak, which enabled her to create her first experimental video works, such as ''Control Piece'' and ''Mirroring''. In part, these works explored the separation between the body and its representation through the use of mirrors and projected images. The presence of mirrors continued into her late-1970s video works which focused primarily on the appropriation of television's conventions. Through the fragmentation and repetition of TV conventions, she used borrowed images to examine the medium's technical structures and bodily gestures.Demos 2010, p. 11–12. These explorations laid a foundation for her most prominent work, the 1978 – 1979 video art work entitled '' Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman''. In this work she used footage appropriated from television of

Wonder Woman Wonder Woman is a superheroine who appears in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character first appeared in ''All Star Comics'' Introducing Wonder Woman, #8, published October 21, 1941, with her first feature in ''Sensation Comic ...

to subvert ideological subtexts and meanings embedded in the television series. "Opening with a prolonged salvo of fiery explosions accompanied by the warning cry of a siren, ''Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman'' is supercharged, action-packed, and visually riveting... throughout its nearly six minutes we see several scenes featuring the main character Diana Prince... in which she transforms into the famed superhero." Her citational use of

illustrates the efforts she made into exploring "television on television," which indicates a consciousness of analyzing the television/video medium within its own terms, an exploration of the structural elements of television content, and an attempt to talk back to

. In 1979, she started to make fast-edited video collages from footage appropriated while working for a TV post-production unit. In 1982, Birnbaum created the piece titled ''PM Magazine/Acid Rock'' with appropriated video from the nightly TV program '' PM Magazine'' and a segment of a Wang Computers commercial. The work was created for '' Documenta 7'' as part of a four channel video installation, and later became a single channel video distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, for which the music was recomposed by Simeon Soffer. ''PM Magazine/Acid Rock'' underscores the themes of consumerism, television, and

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

in Birnbaum's work through the use of pop images and a recomposed version of " L.A. Woman" by

The Doors The Doors were an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1965, comprising vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore. They were among the most influential and controversial rock acts ...

. In 1981, Birnbaum documented a no wave musical performance of

Glenn Branca Glenn Branca (October 6, 1948 – May 13, 2018) was an American avant-garde music, avant-garde composer, guitarist, and luthier. Known for his use of volume, scordatura, alternative guitar tunings, minimal music, repetition, drone (music), dronin ...

's ''Symphony no. 1'' at the Performing Garage for Electronic Arts Intermix. In 1985, she participated in the

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932; the first biennial was held in 1973. It is considered ...

. In her 1990 single channel video work ''Canon: Taking to the Street'' the political act of taking to the street is framed through an iconic evocation of the Paris uprising of May 1968, interspersed with student footage from a Take Back the Night march held at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in April, 1987. Her 1994 six channel video installation ''Hostage'' has as its subject the kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer in 1977. ''Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman'' is held in numerous museum collections, including the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

, the Smithsonian, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She also has works in the collection of the

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's National museums of Canada, national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the List of large ...

, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, and the S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent, Belgium.

Personal life and death

Birnbaum died of metastatic endometrial cancer at a hospital in Manhattan, New York City on May 2, 2025, at the age of 78.

Exhibitions

Major retrospectives of Birnbaum's work have been presented at: * Belvedere Palace, Vienna (2024) which included the installation ''Bruckner: Symphonie Nr. 5 B-Dur'' * Prada Aoyama, Tokyo (2023) * Fondazione Prada, Milan (2023) * Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-On-Hudson, New York (2022) * Miller Institute for Contemporary Art, Pittsburgh, PA (2022) * Museu de Arte Contemporånea de Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2010) * S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent, Belgium (2009) * Documenta 7, 8, and 9, Kassel, Germany

Selected works

Dara Birnbaum works distributed by the Electronic Arts Intermix include: *'' Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman'' 1978-79, 5:50 min, color, sound *'' Kiss The Girls: Make Them Cry'' (1979), 6:50 min, color, sound *''Local TV News Analysis'' (1980), 61:08 min, color, sound *''Pop-Pop Video'' (1980), 9 min, color, sound *''General Hospital/Olympic Women Speed Skating'' (1980), 6 min, color, sound *''Kojak/Wang'' (1980), 3 min, color, sound *''Remy/Grand Central: Trains and Boats and Planes'' (1980), 4:18 min, color, sound *''Fire! Hendrix'' (1982), 3:13 min, color, sound *''PM Magazine/Acid Rock'' (1982), 4:09 min, color, sound *''Damnation of Faust: Evocation'' (1983), 10:02 min, color, sound *''Damnation of Faust: Will-o'-the-Wisp (A Deceitful Goal)'' (1985), 5:46 min, color, sound *''Artbreak, MTV Networks, Inc.'' (1987), 30 sec, color, sound *''Damnation of Faust: Charming Landscape'' (1987), 6:30 min, color, sound *''Canon: Taking to the Streets, Part One: Princeton University - Take Back the Night'' (1990), 10 min, color, sound *''Transgressions'' (1992), 60 sec, color, sound

Arabesque, Special Limited Edition 2021

Dara Birnbaum was the first artist who participated in the D’ORO D’ART Project, for the creation of books that contain digital art. Birnbaum took on the challenge of specially transforming her four-channel video, ''Arabesque'' (2011) to a single-channel video for the book. In this special book edition, stereo sound and image are integrated, and together retrace the love and artistic relationship of Robert and Clara Schumann. Birnbaum brought together selections from Youtube clips of performances of Robert Schumann’s ''Arabesque, Opus 18'', and a singular clip of Clara Schumann’s ''Romanze 1, Opus 11''. Birnbaum juxtaposed these clips with still images made from footage of the 1947 film about the Schumanns, ''Song of Love'', which tellingly features only Robert Schumann's ''Arabesque, Opus 18''. Birnbaum’s ''Arabesque'' delicately reflects on the relationship of Robert and Clara Schumann, a relationship closely linked to music, as they are both composers and pianists. The video ''Arabesque'', Special Limited Edition 2021 is activated by opening the book in which it is contained. The curators of the project are Barbara London and Valentino Catricalà. The book is produced by the publishing house D'ORO, based in Rome. ''Arabesque'', Special Limited Edition 2021 was edited and post-produced by Michael Saia in New York.

Awards

Birnbaum was the recipient of an Award in Art by the

American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, Music of the United States, music, and Visual art of the United States, art. Its fixed number ...

(2024); the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2021); The

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The foundation was created by Standard Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller (" ...

Bellagio Center Arts Residency (2011); the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2011); and a United States Artists Fellow Award (2010). She was the first woman to receive the Maya Deren Award from the

American Film Institute The American Film Institute (AFI) is an American nonprofit film organization that educates filmmakers and honors the heritage of the History of cinema in the United States, motion picture arts in the United States. AFI is supported by private fu ...

for video, presented in 1987. In 2017,

created the Birnbaum Award in her honor.

References

Citations

* * *

External links

Dara Birnbaum at the MNCARS
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Birnbaum, Dara 1946 births 2025 deaths 20th-century American Jews 20th-century American women artists 21st-century American Jews 21st-century American women artists American feminist artists American installation artists American postmodern artists American video artists American women installation artists American women video artists Artists from New York City Carnegie Mellon University alumni Feminism in New York City Jewish American artists Jewish American feminists Jewish women artists Jews from New York City