Advanced search

Documentary series focusing on great American artists and personalities.

Herb and Dorothy Vogel redefine what it means to be an art collector.

A documentary that chronicles artist and activist Ai Weiwei as he prepares for a series of exhibitions and gets into an increasing number of clashes with the Chinese government.

As the Metropolitan Museum of Art closes, Big Bird decides to leave his Sesame Street friends behind in search of Snuffy. Once locked inside for the night, educational hilarity ensues as Big Bird and Snuffy team up to help a ghost of a small Egyptian boy solve a mysterious riddle. The rest of Sesame Street's residents search for Big Bird.

In the 16th Century an Ottoman Sultan known as the second Solomon ruled half the civilized world. The Turks called him Kanuni, the Lawgiver. To the Europeans, he was known as Süleyman the Magnificent. During his 46-year reign, the Ottoman Empire flourished and witnessed a golden age. A contemporary of Francis I of France, Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire and Henry VIII of England, Süleyman was an audacious military leader, celebrated poet, and enthusiastic patron of art and architecture. Shot on location in Turkey, and narrated by Ian McKellan, this film explores the breathtaking palaces and mosques of the Ottoman Empire and focuses on the dramatic life and personality of Sultan Süleyman.

The complicated history of the American South and its music through the life of country star Charley Pride. Raised in segregated Mississippi, his journey shows the ways that artistic expression can triumph over prejudice and injustice.

Beatrice Wood, called the Mama of Dada, is a renowned ceramicist, lover of Marcel Duchamp, and a prime suspect in the Dada art movement of the early 1910's. She died in 1999 at 101 years of age.

Narrated by Robert De Niro, Hans Hofmann: Artist/Teacher Teacher Artist is both an explanation of modern art and the story of a man who influenced thousands, some of whom are today's leading artists.

This program examines the work of Dutch-born artist Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) during the most productive period of his brief artistic life--the fifteen months between February 1888 and May 1889 that he spent in the city of Arles, in the southeastern region of France known as Provence. During his 444 days in Arles, Van Gogh produced some 200 paintings and 100 drawings, inspired by the light and colors of the region. With the guidance of Ronald Pickvance, guest curator of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Van Gogh in Arles" exhibition, the film explores, in depth, several of Van Gogh's most famous works, including the portraits of the Roulin family, The Night Cafe, and Van Gogh's Bedroom. The film also examines several other major works of the Arles period, including The Harvest, Boats on the Beach, The Sunflowers, and introduces paintings from private collections, rarely reproduced. Filmed on location in the Netherlands and Provence, In a Brilliant Light: Van Gogh in Arles focuses on Van Gogh's art and not Van Gogh, the artist, dispelling many myths, while also breaking ground in contemporary scholarship.

Featuring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Diana Vreeland, La Belle Epoque evokes "the beautiful era" (1890-1914), a time in which the wealthy upper classes of the western world gave themselves over to a life of elegance and pleasure, their eyes closed to the increasing social and political turmoil fermenting beneath the surface of society. The program uses period motion pictures, photographs, and sound recordings, as well as the arts and fashions of the period to supplement the spoken memories of the participating interviewees who actually lived La Belle Epoque.

Since 1969, when Chuck Close first exhibited his series of black-and-white portrait heads, his paintings have fascinated the public. Working mostly from instant photographs, Close paints in a style that vacillates between representation and abstraction. His colossal heads, at first severe and confrontational, explode with painterly energy, mesmerizing the viewer with their mosaic-like surfaces. Chuck Close: A Portrait in Progress traces the artist's evolution and follows Close into New York's contemporary art community.

A documentary that presents the great French Impressionist as a daring observer of the nineteenth-century urban scene. It examines Manet's major paintings, using the artist's own words and those of his contemporaries

The Program for Art on Film was a joint venture of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Trust. It was established in 1984 to foster new ways of thinking about the relationship between art and moving-image media. Between 1987 and 1990, the Program for Art on Film commissioned fifteen short films and videos through its Production Laboratory. The Lab was conceived as an arena for inquiry and experimentation - a means of exploring and expanding the cinematic vocabulary of films on art. Each production was designed as an extended collaboration between a filmmaker and an art expert and was intended to explore the issues of collaboration in content-driven filmmaking, seeking new approaches that might influence future films on art. The ART ON FILM series of DVDs presents the results of the Production Laboratory in their original context: as experiments. The broad range of film subjects illustrate a variety of approaches and interpretations. And, while these films ask to be judged as works of art in their own right, they also should be understood as parts of an ongoing dialogue about the cinema's role in communicating art history.

The life of crusader knight William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke (1144?-1219) is illustrated in this TV special from 1994, through interviews and re-creations.

When he was born in 1822, Frederick Law Olmsted's future profession of landscape architect did not yet exist in America. By the end of the 19th century, however, Olmsted had created hundreds of parks throughout the United States, thus defining landscape design for the country. This film documents the creation of Olmsted's first major work, New York City's Central Park, in 1858. The project was fraught with obstacles - political, financial, and topographical - yet the completed park serves as a testament to Olmsted's unique and pioneering vision. The glory of Olmsted's talent is that he was able to transform acres of raw land into natural art forms for all people to enjoy and appreciate in their own way. Told in the dramatic portrait style developed by award-winning director T. W. Timreck, this film blends documentary elements and dramatization, based on the words of the artist and his contemporaries.

The 18th-century represents a period of advancement for women at the highest level of society, though often at the expense of the poverty-bound populace. Her inroads into the world of power and influence, unmatched until the present day, are profiled in The Eighteenth Century Woman. Featuring Marisa Berenson, Diana Vreeland and Stella Blum, this program offers a dazzling array of gowns and costumes, accessories, and jewelry, as well as paintings and music from the period, evoking the lives of the century's most important women, and the age of enlightenment in which they lived.

The Program for Art on Film was a joint venture of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Trust. It was established in 1984 to foster new ways of thinking about the relationship between art and moving-image media. Between 1987 and 1990, the Program for Art on Film commissioned fifteen short films and videos through its Production Laboratory. The Lab was conceived as an arena for inquiry and experimentation - a means of exploring and expanding the cinematic vocabulary of films on art. Each production was designed as an extended collaboration between a filmmaker and an art expert and was intended to explore the issues of collaboration in content-driven filmmaking, seeking new approaches that might influence future films on art. The ART ON FILM series of DVDs presents the results of the Production Laboratory in their original context: as experiments. The broad range of film subjects illustrate a variety of approaches and interpretations. And, while these films ask to be judged as works of art in their own right, they also should be understood as parts of an ongoing dialogue about the cinema's role in communicating art history.

The Program for Art on Film was a joint venture of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Trust. It was established in 1984 to foster new ways of thinking about the relationship between art and moving-image media. Between 1987 and 1990, the Program for Art on Film commissioned fifteen short films and videos through its Production Laboratory. The Lab was conceived as an arena for inquiry and experimentation - a means of exploring and expanding the cinematic vocabulary of films on art. Each production was designed as an extended collaboration between a filmmaker and an art expert and was intended to explore the issues of collaboration in content-driven filmmaking, seeking new approaches that might influence future films on art. The ART ON FILM series of DVDs presents the results of the Production Laboratory in their original context: as experiments. The broad range of film subjects illustrate a variety of approaches and interpretations. And, while these films ask to be judged as works of art in their own right, they also should be understood as parts of an ongoing dialogue about the cinema's role in communicating art history.

Merchants and Masterpieces introduces the fascinating collectors whose vision and generosity helped build The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Narrator Philippe de Montebello, former director of The Metropolitan Museum, tells the stories of J. Pierpont Morgan, Benjamin Altman and Robert Lehman - passionate collectors in pursuit of magnificent works of art. Personal interviews reveal the stories of other notable collectors, including David Rockefeller, who reminisces about his boyhood enchantment with his father's Unicorn tapestries; J. Watson Webb, Jr. recalls his grandmother Louisine Havemeyer as an adventurous art collector and suffragette who taught him a true appreciation for art; and Mary Rockefeller Morgan candidly shares memories of twin brother Michael's quest for art and life among the tribes of New Guinea. Drawn in part from Calvin Tomkins' history of The Metropolitan Museum, Merchants and Masterpieces includes rarely seen archival footage, on-location photography, and glimpses into the unequaled collections of The Metropolitan Museum. It offers viewers a rare opportunity to go beyond the art in search of the people who collected and lived with what are now The Met's masterpieces.

Two paintings owned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City) are compared. They are called "masterpieces" by museum Director Philippe De Montebello. One: Rembrandt's self-portrait of 1660. Two: Velazquez' portrait of Juan De Pareja. This half hour contains two separate short films.

The Program for Art on Film was a joint venture of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Trust. It was established in 1984 to foster new ways of thinking about the relationship between art and moving-image media. Between 1987 and 1990, the Program for Art on Film commissioned fifteen short films and videos through its Production Laboratory. The Lab was conceived as an arena for inquiry and experimentation - a means of exploring and expanding the cinematic vocabulary of films on art. Each production was designed as an extended collaboration between a filmmaker and an art expert and was intended to explore the issues of collaboration in content-driven filmmaking, seeking new approaches that might influence future films on art. The ART ON FILM series of DVDs presents the results of the Production Laboratory in their original context: as experiments. The broad range of film subjects illustrate a variety of approaches and interpretations. And, while these films ask to be judged as works of art in their own right, they also should be understood as parts of an ongoing dialogue about the cinema's role in communicating art history.

The Program for Art on Film was a joint venture of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Trust. It was established in 1984 to foster new ways of thinking about the relationship between art and moving-image media. Between 1987 and 1990, the Program for Art on Film commissioned fifteen short films and videos through its Production Laboratory. The Lab was conceived as an arena for inquiry and experimentation - a means of exploring and expanding the cinematic vocabulary of films on art. Each production was designed as an extended collaboration between a filmmaker and an art expert and was intended to explore the issues of collaboration in content-driven filmmaking, seeking new approaches that might influence future films on art. The ART ON FILM series of DVDs presents the results of the Production Laboratory in their original context: as experiments. The broad range of film subjects illustrate a variety of approaches and interpretations. And, while these films ask to be judged as works of art in their own right, they also should be understood as parts of an ongoing dialogue about the cinema's role in communicating art history.

Renowned for its merchants, artists, and saints, the city of Siena was one of the major centers of Medieval and Renaissance culture. Based in large part on contemporary sources and shot on location in Tuscany, this film focuses on the civic and religious institutions of the city - the municipal government, the cathedral, the Hospital of the Scala - and captures Sienese life and society during its golden age. Presented by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Monte dei Paschi di Siena.

In a New York City Loft, an artist and anthropologist consider a remarkable piece of art. The work is a serial diptych with a Tibetan name that translates as "Fortunate Journey." The artist is renowned 20th century painter Irving Kriesberg. His interlocutor and friend is therapist Judith Gleason.

Over the past 50 years, Robert Indiana has created a unique body of work drawn from pop culture images, American literature, and visual signs from his personal history. Though best known for his iconic LOVE images, Indiana has also worked in painting, sculpture, set design, graphics, printmaking, and assemblage. Born Robert Clark in Newcastle, Indiana in 1928, he changed his name in the mid-1950s when he moved to New York City as a way of honoring his home state, and of assuming a new identity. He first lived on Coenties Slip, where his neighbors included Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, and Jack Youngerman, then in a loft building on the Bowery until he moved to Maine in 1978. He now lives and works in a former Odd Fellows Lodge on Vinalhaven Island. This hour-long portrait combines archival footage of Indiana at work in his studio with photographs, interviews, poetry, prose, and contemporary scenes to create a visual autobiography in the artist's own words and images.