participated in an international research project concerning preservation and documentation of installations called Inside Installations, from 2007 to 2010 it led the European project "Gateways to Archives of Media Art" (GAMA) providing access to a wealth of information about the works of both well-known and emerging artists from European collections of media art. Collection NIMk has built up an extensive collection of video and media art for the last 30 years which constitutes one of the largest video art collections in Europe. The video collection consists of a distribution and a documentation collection, which are both available in the Mediatheque at NIMk. The catalogue is published online, with short excerpts of most of the works. This way the NIMk seeks to promote media art to a wider audience. The distribution collection comprises more than 2000 works; varying form the earliest experiments through recent productions. These works are lend out for a wide range of purposes, like international and national festivals, exhibitions at various art institutions and for educational use. The distribution department presents video art, media art and installations to professionals and they organise and facilitate presentations of works from the collection. NIMk also maintains the collections of the Appel Foundation (De Appel), the former Lijnbaan Center in Rotterdam and the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (ICN). History What was going to become NIMk, started out as MonteVideo, founded in 1978 by René Coelho a former camera man. René Coelho made an exhibition space in his own home as well as equipment and documentation available for artists. In 1983 MonteVideo moved to a bigger space in Amsterdam North and was now showing works of international as well as Dutch artists. The first artist to exhibit was Livinus van de Bundt. Later followed by artists such as Bert Schutter, Bill Viola, Gary Hill and Shelly Silver. MonteVideos collection of contemporary art kept growing into a large collection of works, which was rented out. Another organisation for new media art was founded that year, by Association of Video Artists, called Time Based Arts. For some time MonteVideo and Time Based Arts where competing against each other to get recognition and funding. From 1986 to 1993 Monte Videos government funding was reduced and René Coëlho continued on his own. During this period the exhibition of Dutch media art "Imago" toured worldwide. In the meantime the death of Aart van Barneveld, the director of