Willoughby Sharp

Willoughby Sharp (January 23, 1936 – December 17, 2008) was an internationally known artist, independent curator, independent publisher, gallerist, teacher, author, and telecom activist.

Born in New York City, Sharp studied art history at Brown University and graduated with a BA in 1957. He undertook graduate study in art history at the University of Paris, the University of Lausanne, and Columbia University. Sharp began his media work in 1967 by shooting a small number of films in 8mm, Super 8mm, and 16mm including “Earth,” (1968, Collection: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) and “Place & Process,” (1969, Collection: MoMA, New York). After these films, he started producing a prodigious body of video works in 1/2, 3/4 and 1-inch tape. These works included video sculpture, video installations, “Videoviews,” (1970–1974), Videoperformances (1973–1977), cable television programs (1985–1986), and broadcast TV programs (2001-).

In February 1969, at the invitation of Hans Haacke, he presented a three-part video installation, “Earthscopes,” at Cooper Union, N.Y., which included the only showing of a video catalogue of the historic “Earth Art” exhibition that he had curated at the Andrew Dickson White Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. In March 1969, Sharp created “Einstein’s Eye,” a closed-circuit b/w video sculpture exhibited at the Richard L. Feigen Gallery in Soho, N.Y.

The following year, Sharp’s film “Place and Process” was included in MoMA’s “INFORMATION” exhibition curated by Kynaston McShine. Also in 1970, Sharp curated “Body Works,” an exhibition of Video art with works by Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman, Terry Fox, Keith Sonnier, Dennis Oppenheim and William Wegman which was presented at Tom Marioni's Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco, California.

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