The Smithsonian American Art Museum said today that it has won a competition to acquire the research and document archive of Nam June Paik, cementing its position as a center of scholarship for the pioneering video artist.

The archive consists of research materials, correspondence, documentation, sculptural robots, and video and television technology, the Smithsonian said, adding that the items number in the thousands. Once the materials are catalogued, they will be made available to researchers.

The Smithsonian features several Paik works in its permanent collection, including two video walls – Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii (1995) and Megatron/Matrix (1995) – and an early work called Zen for TV (1963/1976). John G. Hanhardt, consulting senior curator for film and media arts at the museum, is a specialist in Paik’s work.

Paik fled the Korean War with his family in 1950, eventually immigrating to the United States in 1964, the Smithsonian said. He had already begun cobbling artworks out of electronics, and began working with a portable video camera in 1965.

The archive was gifted to the Smithsonian by the Paik Estate, via Ken Hakuta, the artist’s nephew and executor and a former member of the museum’s advisory board of commissioners. The Smithsonian said it and other museums were approached by the estate and asked how they would use the archive.

New Yorkers can visit a Paik exhibition on view through the end of May at the James Cohan Gallery in Chelsea.