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
Human rights and justice
Surreal, dazzling visuals form an Iranian expat’s tribute to defiance back home
10 minutes
video
Language and linguistics
Do button-pushing dogs have something new to say about language?
9 minutes
video
Art
When East met West in the images of an overlooked, original photographer
9 minutes
video
Values and beliefs
Why a single tree, uprooted in a typhoon, means so much to one man in Hanoi
7 minutes
video
Consciousness and altered states
‘I want me back’ – after a head injury, Nick struggles with his altered reality
7 minutes
video
Making
On the Norwegian coast, a tree is transformed into a boat the old-fashioned way
6 minutes
video
Animals and humans
One man’s quest to save an orphaned squirrel, as narrated by David Attenborough
14 minutes
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
A future in which ‘artificial scientists’ make discoveries may not be far away
9 minutes
video
History
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes