MTV MUSIC TELEVISION turns 10 on Thursday....

MTV MUSIC TELEVISION turns 10 on Thursday. Ten years of merging those “massest” of media--radio and television--into a commercially viable new product. Music television.

That birthday provides a logical starting date for the Long Beach Museum of Art’s second examination of music video as art. Having established their thesis in a 1989 show that, yes, music video is an art form, media arts specialists Michael Nash and Kim Harlan have compiled an ambitious and comprehensive follow-up titled “Art of Music Video: Ten Years After.” The six programs feature more than 120 works and trace the genre’s history, creative currents and artistic influences.

The new exhibit examines music video as more of “a cultural and popular phenomenon, a sociological statement,” explained Harlan, media arts assistant curator at the museum. To that end, she says, this exhibition includes a close look at the political effects of music video and “what implications there are for our culture.”

The series begins Thursday with “The MTV Decade,” a presentation that pays a sort of backhanded homage to MTV. Its focus is not on the usual mindless (though commercially successful) MTV fare. There’s no M.C. Hammer. No Paula Abdul. No Madonna.

Instead the program highlights the avant-garde, the surreal, the ambitious, the experimental, the obscure. Devo. Laurie Anderson. The Smiths. The Replacements. Inspiral Carpets.

“These are artists using a camera and monitor instead of a paintbrush and canvas,” Harlan said. “The most important thing, really, is we hope the exhibit turns them (the audience) on to video as an art form--to see these things in a larger light than just as music videos but instead as little pieces of art.”

“The MTV Decade” pays particular attention to musicians such as David Bowie and David Byrne--whose artistic vision encompasses the visual interpretation of their songs. The program leaves the viewer yearning for a return to the early days of MTV, before record studios fully realized the potential of music videos to sell their product--when musicians, not marketing specialists, made the decisions about how best to visualize a song.

Yes, some of the older videos from the Long Beach exhibit seem rather amateurish and slow-paced in comparison to the high-tech, hyperkinetic style of most rock videos today. But they also seem so much more original and thoughtful and provocative. They don’t seem like they’re following a formula (long-haired rocker + beautiful bimbo = gold record). Instead, they seem like art. And that’s the point.