Getty will get Long Beach Museum tapes

Lacking the resources to conserve one of the nation’s oldest museum collections of video art, the Long Beach Museum of Art will transfer its 3,000-plus tapes to the Getty Research Institute -- among them works by Nam June Paik, William Wegman and Bill Viola.

Harold Nelson, director of the Long Beach Museum, said that because playing a tape hastens its deterioration, the collection needs to be transferred to computer disc for safe exhibition -- a process that for museum-quality works requires the ministrations of conservators.

The Getty is happy to tackle the job and inherit the archive, said Thomas Crow, director of its Research Institute. “There are tapes ... here that don’t exist in any other holdings, including some that the artists themselves believed were lost.”

The deal, which involves no money, will make the collection more accessible to the Long Beach museum’s audience, Nelson said. The Getty will provide digital copies of the tapes to the Long Beach Museum. The transfer was approved Tuesday by the Long Beach City Council.

-- Mike Boehm