Art Institute of Chicago Guts Video Data Bank Staff, Sparking Outcry

The future of one of the world’s leading archives of video art has been thrown into uncertainty after the School of the Art Institute of Chicago abruptly laid off three of the five staff members of its Video Data Bank (VDB), among them its director. The sweeping cuts have sparked outcry across the new-media art community and renewed concerns about the financial pressures buffeting U.S. art schools.

Founded in 1976, VDB has long served as one of the most indispensable resources for video and media art, distributing more than 6,000 works to museums, universities, and libraries worldwide.

The collection dates from the 1960s to the present and features some 600 artists, including Coco Fusco, Dara Birnbaum, Paul Chan, Nam June Paik, Martine Syms, Bruce Nauman, Pipilotti Rist, and Joan Jonas. The entire collection is available via a subscription streaming service for higher-education institutions that was introduced last year.

The sudden layoffs, which eliminated leadership and key distribution and digital management roles, come as SAIC faces steep enrollment declines and financial shortfalls. The terminated positions are that of the director, Tom Colley; the digital collection and media manager, Elise Schierbeek; and distribution assistant, Nicky Ni. Colley worked at VDB for 27 years, and had been its director since 2022. The remaining employees are Emily Martin, the distribution manager, and Kristin MacDonough, the archive and collection manager.

“The administration came to these decisions without the knowledge or input of VDB staff or others who understand VDB operations, mission, or values,” Colley wrote in a letter to VDB artists that has been shared on Instagram. “This has been a shock to the staff and all other community members and stakeholders.” He added that there are rumors of other structural and mission changes are happening as well, and that there will be no new acquisitions or programming.

Colley’s missive was cosigned by VDB cofounder Kate Horsfield, and his predecessor Abina Manning, who held the director post from 2006 to 2021.

“Like many colleges, SAIC is facing financial pressures due to changes in federal policy and their effects on enrollment,” a SAIC representative said in an email, adding that the school had taken “several actions” to reduce spending, including the elimination of a limited number of staff roles throughout the college in order to better center the academic mission. “The Video Data Bank is not going away; however, in order to maintain and distribute its collection, we needed to adjust staffing levels. This was a challenging but necessary decision that allows us to protect our core teaching mission and preserve the future of the Video Data Bank.”

The representative did not clarify whether VDB plans to continue acquiring new work.

Difficult Times for U.S. Universities

The job cuts at VDB were among 20 layoffs across SAIC, reported Hyperallergic. In a letter addressed to the “SAIC Community” shared by the Chicago cultural publication Newcity, president Jiseon Lee Isbara noted that “SAIC is facing a significant financial shortfall due to a decline in enrollment—particularly among international students.”

The VDB website notes that it is “supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts,” which abruptly terminated much of its promised funding under President Donald Trump.

The layoffs, which were announced on November 12, were first noted on Instagram by film and video artist Jim Finn, a professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn whose work is represented in VDB.

“[VDB] is a harbor of love for artists who need to hustle for their new projects, hustle to make a living, hustle to make a name for themselves, hustle to be in the game, and for those who think hustling is a kind of creeping illness,” Finn wrote. “I’m very sad about this. The school is making a mistake on so many levels from the way they treated their amazing employees to the way they are effing up this treasure of the art and moving image world.”

The video art community has rallied around the need to preserve VDB.

“Like many of us who worked there, VDB is in my blood. Questions around what is happening with the organization, the represented artists, the staff team, the programs, the collection, are running around my brain,” Manning wrote on Instagram. When a commenter asked “How can we fight this?” she responded “Working on it…”

According to a new artist-run initiative called VDB Forever, Melanie Emerson, dean of the school’s library and special collections, is now running VDB.

“This evolving group will release more information on a proposed course of action in the weeks and months to come,” VDB Forever’s email said, as reported by Artnews. “Although the future of VDB is uncertain, the concern expressed across the arts community underscores the organization’s irreplaceable role in the history, present, and future of moving-image art.”

VDB recently hosted a video livestream of Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese‘s Last Call – DemocracyICED, the latest piece in “Melted Away,” a series of politically engaged ice sculptures from the duo, collectively known as LigoranoReese. They erected a 17-foot-wide, 3,000-pound ice sculpture of the word “Democracy” on the National Mall in front of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., on October 15, leaving it to melt as a commentary on the state of the nation’s politics under Trump.