When Nam June Paik arrived in the United States in 1964, its wide open country and boundless highways made a big impression on the Korean-born artist.

Thirty-one years later, in 1995, Paik—a video-art pioneer—created a paean to the glowing motels and restaurant signs that once beckoned Americans out to the open road. His “Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii” is a mesmerizing sculpture made up of 336 televisions; 50 DVD players; 3,750 feet of cable; and 575 feet of multicolor neon tubing.

Powered-up, it is a 32-foot-wide glowing map of the United States. Televisions in the space for Oklahoma and Kansas ceaselessly play the musicals “Oklahoma” and “The Wizard of Oz.” The Mississippi is a blinking baby-blue neon band. Iowa, famous for its caucuses, has four televisions broadcasting footage of 20th-century American presidents, the face of one morphing into the next. A complex skeleton of wood-and-steel scaffolding and iron armature support it all.

Acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2002 as a gift from Paik, who died in January 2006, “Electronic Superhighway” arrived in Washington, D.C., as four crates of neon tubing (some broken); an iron armature in eight pieces; and less than 50 states worth of state-themed video content on laser disc.

With this electronic marvel slated to occupy a prominent place in the American Art Museum’s third-floor Lincoln Gallery when the museum opens, after extensive renovation, on July 1, the challenge of resurrecting “Electronic Superhighway” fell to Museum Specialist Adam Rice.

Pre-flight
Rice first transported the pieces to an off-site warehouse in Largo, Md., for a test assembly. In unpacking “Electronic Superhighway,” Rice noticed that “a lot of the parts were missing.” The prolific Paik was known to recycle components, such as televisions, from his old works for new ones.

Consulting with longtime Paik assistant Jon Huffman of New York, American Art Museum Collections Coordinator Betsy Anderson had all the media content for the individual states updated. “Laser disc players don’t really exist anymore,” so Paik’s movie and video footage was transferred to DVD, Anderson says.

Video footage for New York was missing entirely, so Huffman shot replacement footage of the Empire State Building. Hundreds of televisions in a variety of sizes had to be purchased.

1995 footage
What Rice would have liked most to find in the boxes and crates that came from Paik’s studio were some instructions. None existed. So he worked with the next best thing: video footage of the artwork shot when “Electronic Superhighway” debuted in 1995 in New York City.

By watching the video over and over, Rice was able to determine what size television monitors Paik had used in his original work, as well as their sometimes peculiar positioning.

“The thing gets pretty complicated,” Rice explains. “Some of the TVs are upside-down or on their sides.” Screen sizes of the televisions ranged from 5 inches to 27 inches. Paik also incorporated nine 2-inch televisions with liquid crystal display screens.

Rice’s task was made all the harder because the video he was studying had been shot too near to the artwork. “It’s close-up, panning over it,” Rice says. His work was like trying to get a sense of the real United States from footage shot from a low-flying airplane.

Alternating his gaze between the video and his computer screen, Rice began the arduous task of making a computer blueprint of “Electronic Superhighway” with architectural drafting software.

He began by designing the steel scaffold with wooden decks on which the 336 televisions are arranged. He also mapped the precise placement of each television inside the iron armature that stands in front of the scaffold.

Still studying the 1995 gallery footage—“I looked at the tape so long and so many times, I thought I was going to go nuts,” he recalls—Rice next re-created the neon layer on his computer. Local neon artists were called in to consult.

Finally, using his blueprint, Rice assembled “Electronic Superhighway,” with Huffman’s guidance, in the Largo warehouse. “Jon, who was aware of Paik’s intent, got his jeans on, and we lifted all the TVs and placed them,” he says.

After he successfully powered it up, Rice brought in his four kids, ages 5 to 11, for a glimpse. “They were amazed,” he says.

A month after assembling the piece, Rice took it all apart. He is now reassembling it at the American Art Museum.

Future upgrades
Even after “Electronic Superhighway” goes on display, it may present challenges for Smithsonian American Art Museum staff. Betsy Anderson has ordered a back-up set of DVDs, and Rice has extra televisions at the ready “for when the tubes go,” he says.

Decades from now, it may be impossible to repair or replace the curved screen, cathode-ray-tube monitors that give “Electronic Superhighway” its 1990s look. However, as other late 20th-century electronic components disappear from repair shop shelves, further technological upgrades may be needed to keep artworks such as “Electronic Superhighway” alive for museum visitors. “We won’t really know until we play this thing for however many years on end,” Rice adds.