Shave and a Haircut (Angelo Madsen)

On November 12, 2025, The College of the Artwork Institute of Chicago (SAIC) “gutted” Video Knowledge Financial institution (VDB), the important moving-image artwork distributor, archive and streaming platform. The elimination of 60% of its employees, together with director Tom Colley, and announcement that it will on account of this discount now not purchase new work, despatched shock waves by the video artwork neighborhood, together with the a whole lot of artists represented by the distributor, an illustrious roster together with, to call a number of, Bruce Nauman, Miranda July, Martha Rosler, Tiffany Shaw, Christopher Harris and Elisabeth Subrin. One artist included in VDB’s catalog is an SAIC alumni, Angelo Madsen, who has been featured in Filmmaker a number of instances. He submitted the beneath open letter from himself to the college, and we’re printing it beneath. Moreover, Colley has commented in a letter printed on Instagram. — Editor

Expensive Dr. Martin Berger and the College of the Artwork Institute of Chicago,

I attain out to you right this moment as a involved alumni. I did a few of my most vital progress throughout my years as an SAIC undergrad, from 2001-2005, shifting between all the departments, however most importantly the Sound Division and Movie/Video/New Media. Throughout that point the Video Knowledge Financial institution was a foundational useful resource for me.

I’m reaching out to specific my deep sorrow and dismay on the current termination of three of the 5 key employees of the Video Knowledge Financial institution, and to study that the VDB will likely be restructured to now not purchase new work. I perceive these employees have been escorted from their workplaces by safety and instantly shut out from their e mail accounts, rendering them unable to contact exterior events impacted (such because the 600+ artists they signify).

For thus many college students and kids exploring the fringes and legacies of artwork/culture-making, bearing witness to the scope of risk, and importantly, encountering new work, the Video Knowledge Financial institution is and has been unshakably seminal to an SAIC training. Alone, on a beanbag, in a small room, with a rollout VHS participant, I discovered what video artwork was, and had no concept how deeply it will change my life. 

I’m now a college professor, my movies have screened broadly all over the world, I’m a Guggenheim Fellow (2022), a Inventive Capital Fellow (2025), a United States Artist Fellow (2023), and a MacDowell Fellow (2022), amongst many different honors. I cite these awards not as a result of they legitimize my value as an artist, however as a result of they doubtless convey my value as an artist, to you, the establishment that’s the College of the Artwork Institute. I do know that you simply worth these honors as a result of you have got shared them on social media, despatched me messages through alumni relations, and have quantified my awards into the information you market to future funders. My statistics straight mirror your funding and consequently, tuition {dollars}. You capitalize off of my success. You capitalize off of the success of each artist who has come and gone from the College of the Artwork Institute.

As such, I’m certain you might be conscious the impacts of an SAIC training stem straight from instruction and mentorship – the people and communities that come up round college students, but in addition from employees, departments, and supplementary organizations and collections, for instance, the particular collections together with the Joan Flasch Artists’ Guide Assortment on the Flaxman Library, the Gene Siskel Movie Middle, and naturally, the Video Knowledge Financial institution – one of many world’s foremost distributors of Video Artwork. Let me repeat, world and foremost. 

Are you conscious that the Video Knowledge Financial institution is a global useful resource? Maybe you might be unaware that the VDB is the important thing steward of a number of the most vital movies and movies on the earth. Maybe you might be unaware that Video Knowledge Financial institution director Tom Colley, (and beforehand director Abina Manning and founding administrators Kate Horsfield and Lyn Blumenthal) have spent over 30 years cultivating the relationships with artists, estates, and collections all over the world to develop that unbridled robustness. The depth of their assortment, their presence throughout probably the most vital venues on the earth, not in contrast to my awards, has been a bearer of status to your establishment for many years. You’ve got bought the Video Knowledge Financial institution as a key helpful useful resource to your potential college students and funders alike.

From what I perceive, you propose to restrict operations at VDB and limit any new acquisitions, and that this justifies lowering the group to a two-person employees. Do you assume it’s cheap to anticipate a two-person employees to handle a set of over 6,000 movies? Do you assume it’s logical to ask a two-person employees to handle a set of over 6,000 movies, and proceed to distribute to a number of the most interesting movie festivals, museums, and venues on the earth? (I might insert a truncated checklist right here, however it will require this letter to be 16 additional pages.) Do you assume it’s potential for a two-person employees to handle a set of over 6,000 movies and proceed to distribute to a number of the most notable movie festivals and venues on the earth, and keep absolutely engaged with the shifting panorama of moving-image work because it straight displays traits in archiving and distribution? Do you perceive the depth of technical data and the richness of long-built entry factors wanted to satisfy any of those duties?

Your choice to make such a drastic (and swift, which I’ll return to later) intervention with the VDB suggests to me that you’ve restricted data of the group, its vibrant assist system, and of the sector of shifting picture, if any. Or, that you’re conscious, however merely don’t care.

Permit me to supply a suggestion of how potential restructuring might need gone, in case you had chosen to navigate the scenario with baseline consideration. You may begin by organising an appointment with senior VBD employees to alert them to the college’s bigger monetary considerations. You may then have requested for his or her enter in considering by how the group may take into account shifting its operations. You might need invited neighboring organizations to debate the potential of shared governance or partnerships. You might need approached personal donors individually with particular fundraising targets for the Video Knowledge Financial institution completely. Your failure to discover any of those alternate options demonstrates no concern for others, culturally or individually. 

At the start of this letter I cited that I used to be writing to specific my sorrow and dismay. However to be clear, I’m additionally writing to specific my disgust. Some phrases I’d use to explain this disgust are: Abhorrent, nefarious, despicable. However I may additionally say well timed. It’s well timed that our nation is in a disaster of upper training, simply as you’d make this choice. It’s well timed that our nation is in a disaster of historic erasure as you make this choice. It’s well timed that our greater institutional buildings are being piecemealed off to the slaughterhouse en masse, as you make this choice. It’s not a coincidence that that path to authoritarianism is cast by eradicating entry to greater training, severing alternatives for cross-cultural discourse and cultural criticism, and piecemealing museums, archives, and different cultural establishments by underfunding, limiting their attain, and resulting in their closure.

Out of your 30 years of service to cultural establishments, you understand that to be an artist is to be a tradition maker. To be a tradition maker is to be a cultural critic. An artist has to have one thing to say. It’s no coincidence that the artworks held on the Video Knowledge Financial institution are a number of the most culturally crucial on the earth. It’s well timed that you simply search to dismantle this, to render this criticism inaccessible. 

Simply as you have got devoted your whole profession to the sector of upper training, this employees has devoted their whole careers to cinema. Are you able to probably think about being walked out of your workplace on the establishment you’ve put your life’s work into by the identical safety that you simply see day-after-day, with no discover or purpose in any way? This can be a easy query of humanity. Do you imagine in it or not? Would you take into account this humane therapy? Clearly, it’s not. Why the inhumanity of this methodology, Dr. Berger? Your lack of respect for the life’s work of those staffers is unconscionable. 

Whenever you had Tom Colley escorted from his workplace, you additionally froze him from his e mail account. The e-mail account that he has used since 1999 to correspond with the hundreds of artists that he has constructed vital relationships with and people whose work the VDB holds. Holds. Is entrusted with. There’s a delicateness there, which you have got trespassed. These a whole lot of artists that the Video Knowledge Financial institution represents (together with myself) have been unable to speak about the way forward for our collections with our distributor. Your disrespect for our area, for the employees’s incomparable data and their particular person personhoods, ripples by them, and passes onto the greater than 500 residing artists represented by the Video Knowledge Financial institution. After which by us, and onto the remaining lifeless that hang-out the collections.

I’m certain that you’ll largely attribute this discount in staffing and freezing of acquisitions as being associated to institutional monetary pressure. I don’t doubt that SAIC is experiencing a shift in funds, as many establishments are. As a professor myself, I additionally perceive the institutional frameworks of capital and value. But, financial worth just isn’t how we construct tradition as a result of the worth of tradition just isn’t measured in cash. I do know that you understand this, however maybe it has been clouded, otherwise you forgot this someplace alongside your option to an almost half a million-dollar yearly wage? Your complete reported compensation as of 2024 was $402,532. A easy 5% discount in your wage would permit fundamental VDB operations to proceed uninterrupted for 3 months – an applicable period of time to reassess operations. Maybe a 3% discount amongst the highest 20 institutional earners would simply permit the VDB to function absolutely intact (with a employees of 5) in perpetuity?   

It must be clear now, that my concern just isn’t for the well-being of my movies. In fact I’ve copies of these, and… they’re simply… movies. My concern is with moral priorities this choice reveals – unstable values, and a deeply misguided proclivity to prioritize monetary achieve over cultural well-being. I cannot deliver up SAIC’s historical past of no-notice terminations. I cannot deliver up the egregious manipulation and mistreatment of adjunct college over the past 30+ years, counting on their experience to generate the competency of the artists whose successes you later use to market to potential college students and their mother and father. But, that’s in my thoughts as I write this. I cannot deliver up the current controversy round your language blunder of 2018, although that’s on my thoughts as I write this. And I cannot level to the truth that on the very same day that VDB staffers have been escorted out of their workplaces, the senior administrator of the Artwork Training program, Katheleen McGrath, was additionally walked out of her workplace. I’ll nevertheless repeat the phrase training. The very factor our authoritarian regime is trying to silence.

In a disaster of training, you don’t reduce the meat. You chop the fats. Which is commonly on the high.

My request is that you simply reinstate the complete employees, publicly apologize for mismanagement, and enter a mediation course of with the Video Knowledge Financial institution. I imagine former ED, Abina Manning, must be a part of that dialog, together with the five-person employees. Tom Colley has been fostering the relationships with artists, curators, programmers, writers and critics which are irreplaceable, and he’ll finest know the right way to information the group ahead by a extra humane, educated restructuring course of.

I entrusted my 22 movies, spanning 2004-now, to the Video Knowledge Financial institution, not as a result of I’m an alum of SAIC, nor as a result of I really wanted a distributor. I’ve been doing this lengthy sufficient that I understand how to get my work out into the world. I work with the VDB as a result of I imagine within the mission – its imaginative and prescient of entry, stewardship, and dissemination, and the gathering as an axis of artistic risk.

I sincerely hope you’ll take into account my phrases.

Finest,

Angelo Madsen (presently)
Initiatives as Angelo/Madsen Minax (2005-2022)
Affiliate Professor of Time-Based mostly Media
College of Vermont