Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
A museum is so much more than the exhibitions it has on display on any given day. Behind the scenes of almost any museum is a team of researchers, conservators, curators, educators and more bringing these indispensable institutions to life for the public. The cinéma vérité documentary Museum, 1972 from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) in New York City offers a glimpse of the constellation of expertise and institutional knowledge that make museums shine. Moving between the planning of an Egyptology exhibition at the Met, a scientific study of Botticelli’s Madonna and Child at the Fogg Museum at Harvard, the replication of a dinosaur skeleton at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the conservation of a Kanaga mask at the National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC, the film forms a charming tribute to the dedicated people who make great museums worth visiting again and again.
Director: Jeff Lieberman
Producers: Saul J Turell, Jeff Lieberman
Website: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
video
Sports and games
The brutality and beauty of the West African martial art of ‘dambe’
15 minutes
video
Biology
Flicker through the eclectic beauty and biological diversity of 2,400 leaves
3 minutes
video
Animals and humans
What happened when one woman raised an abandoned squirrel as her own
8 minutes
video
Art
The female Abstract Expressionists of New York shook the world of art
15 minutes
video
The future
What’s the healthiest way to handle a creeping feeling that the world is ending?
15 minutes
video
Archaeology
From Roman pots to glass eyes, the shore of the river Thames teems with surprises
8 minutes
video
Psychiatry and psychotherapy
Pondering the peculiar one-sided intimacy of the client-therapist relationship
3 minutes
video
History of science
Bat-people on the Moon – what a famed 1835 hoax reveals about misinformation today
8 minutes
video
Human rights and justice
Thirty years after one teenager shot another, is it time to forgive?
28 minutes