The Getty Center's California Video

Serious stuff out of The Getty.  They've posted a nice assortment of excerpts of videos from their California Video exhibition online: over fifty videos covering over forty years worth of material.

The ability to sort by date, artist, or theme (e.g. 'California Stories', 'Signal Distortion', etc.) is fun, but it's a little bit of a shame that they chose to use their own proprietary media player instead of just using YouTube.  If the quality of their digitizations was markedly better I'd understand the choice, but they're only a tad bit bigger than the default YouTube size, and you can't adjust their size even in the cases where the quality of the resolution begs for it.

I recognize the oddity in entrusting a public corporation with hosting the media files, but the broader reach such a move would afford seems worth it.  How great would it be to have Burden, Baldessari, Ant Farm, and the host of others popping up as suggested videos for YouTube users?  (Also, I could then be a little bit lazier about updating the Video Art series on here, and just embed Getty videos for the next few weeks.)

All of that said, I'm excited.  It's great to find more of this stuff slowly making its way online.  Now if only the Centre Pompidou (neat opening page), where I saw remarkable access to full-length videos via computer terminals during a visit this summer, and other institutions would make a move.