From archaeology digs to display cabinets: how museums bring exhibits to life

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.