This thesis discusses how museum structures were redefined over a twenty-two year period in specific relation to the impetus of Video Art. It contends that Video Art would be instrumental in the evolution of the contemporary art museum. The thesis will analyse, discuss and evaluate the problematic nature and form of Video Art within four major contemporary art museums - the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Georges Pompidou National Centre of Art and Culture in Paris, the Tate Gallery in London and the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) in Sydney. By addressing some of the problems that Video Art would present to those museums under discussion, the thesis will reveal how Video Art would challenge institutional structures and demand more flexible viewing environments. As a result, the modern museum would need to constantly modify their policies and internal spaces in order to cope with the dynamism of Video Art. This thesis first defines the classical museum structure established by the Louvre during the 19th century. It examines the transformation from the classical to the modern model through the initiatives of the New York Metropolitan Museum to MoMA in New York. MoMA would be the first major museum to exhibit Video Art in a concerted fashion and this would establish a pattern of acquisition and exhibition that became influential for other global institutions to replicate. MoMA's exhibition and acquisition activities are analysed and contrasted with the Centre Pompidou, the Tate Gallery and the AGNSW in order to define a lineage of development in relation to Video Art. This thesis provides an historical explanation for the museum/gallery's relationship to Video Art from its emergence in the gallery to the beginnings of its acceptance as a global art phenomenon. Curatorial strategies, the influx of corporate patronage and the reconstruction of spectatorship within the gallery are analysed in relation to the unique problematic of Video Art. Several prominent video artists are examined in relation to the challenges they would present to the institutionalised framework of the modern art museum and the discursive field surrounding their practice. In addition, the thesis contains a theoretical discussion of the problems related to Video Art imagery with the period of High Modernism; examines the patterns of acquisition and exhibition, and presents an analysis of global exchange between four distinct contemporary art institutions.