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Video Data Bank (VDB) is an international video art distribution organization and resource in the United States for videos by and about contemporary artists. Located in Chicago, Illinois, VDB was founded at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1976 at the inception of the media arts movement.
VDB provides experimental video art, documentaries made by artists, and interviews with visual artists and critics for a wide range of audiences. These include microcinemas, moving image festivals, media arts centers, universities, libraries, museums, community-based workshops, public television, and cable TV Public-access television centers. Video Data Bank currently holds over 6,000 titles in distribution, by more than 600 artists, available in a variety of screening and archival video formats. It also actively publishes anthologies and curated programs of video art.
The preservation of historic video is an ongoing project of the Video Data Bank. The total holdings, including works both in and out of distribution, include over 10,000 titles of original and in some cases, rarely seen, video art and documentaries from the late 1960s on. In 2015 VDB launched VDB TV, an innovative digital distribution project which provides free, online streaming access to curated programs of video and media art. VDB TV offers viewers across the United States and beyond access to rare video art, the opportunity to engage with programs conceived by a wide range of curators, and original writing, all while ensuring that artists are compensated for their work.[1] The VDB functions as a Department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is supported in part by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council.