Beryl Korot is a pioneer of video art, and of multiple channel work in particular. By applying specific structures inherent to loom programming to the programming of multiple channels she brought the ancient and modern worlds of technology into conversation. This extended to a body of work on handwoven canvas in an original language based on the grid structure of woven cloth and to a series of paintings on canvas based on this language. She co-founded and edited Radical Software, the first publication to focus on the potentials of video as an art form (1970-74) and tool for social change.
More recently she has created drawings which combine ink, pencil and digitized threads, as well as large scale “tapestries” where threads are printed on paper and woven.
Two early multiple channel works, Dachau 1974 and Text and Commentary have been installed in exhibitions on both the history of video art and textiles. Her works have been seen at the Whitney Museum (1980,1993, 2000, 2002); the Kitchen, New York, NY (1975); Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, NY (1977); Documenta 6, Kassel, Germany (1977); the John Weber Gallery, NYC (1986);The Köln and Düsseldorf Kunstvereins (1989 and 1994); the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, PA (1990); The Reina Sofia, Madrid, (1994); the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2010); bitforms gallery, New York, NY (2012/2018); the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, England (2013); Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany (2013); Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2014), The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (2014); Tate Modern, London, England (2014); the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (2015); Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, ICI Project 35, Moscow, Russia (2015/16), SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA (2016), Santa Fe Thoma Art House (2017), LOOP festival, Santa Agata Capella, Barcelona (2017), ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany (2017-18); Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959–1989 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2017-18). Documenta Politik und Kunst, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin (2021/22), Core Memory, Newcomb Museum (2022), Key Operators Kunstverein Munchen, Fall, 2024; Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2025), amongst others.
Two video/music collaborations with Steve Reich—The Cave (1993) and Three Tales (2002)—brought video installation art into a theatrical context and have been performed worldwide since 1993. Both works continue to be performed and were exhibited as video installations at venues including the Whitney Museum, NYC, NY (1993); the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, (1994); the Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain (1994) , the Kunstverein, Düsseldorf, Germany (1994); Historisches Museum, Frankfurt, Germany (2000), ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2008.
Korot’s work is in both private and public collections including MoMA, NYC, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Kramlich collection, the Sol LeWitt Collection, the Thoma Art Foundation, and others. She is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Montgomery Fellow from Dartmouth College, a recipient of numerous grants from the New York State Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Anonymous Was a Woman.
