Museum Town

From the cabinets of curiosities created in Italy during the 16th century to the prestigious cultural institutions of today, a history of museums that analyzes the social and political changes that have taken place over the centuries.

A collection of BBC archive material about painter Francis Bacon, including a previously unseen interview recorded in 1965.

A follow up to award winning documentary 'Herb & Dorothy', the film captures the ordinary couple's extraordinary gift of art to the nation as they close the door on their life as collectors. When Herb and Dorothy Vogel, a retired postal clerk and librarian, began collecting works of contemporary art in the 1960s, they never imagined it would outgrow their one bedroom Manhattan apartment and spread throughout America. 50 years later, the collection is nearly 5,000 pieces and worth millions. Refusing to sell, the couple launches an unprecedented gift project giving artworks to one museum in all 50 states. The film journeys around the country with the Vogels, meeting artists who are famous or unknown, often controversial, striking today's society with questions about art and its survival.

Lifting the lid on the fascinating last decade of Andy Warhol's life and the legacy he left for future artists, through never-before-seen footage and interviews with insiders.

An unvarnished look at the heroin epidemic sweeping America's small towns and communities, focusing on on eight young addicts in idyllic Cape Cod, Mass.

This Traveltalk series short takes the viewer to sites in Massachusetts. Places visited include Plymouth Rock and harbor; John and Priscilla Alden's 300 year-old house; and the birthplace of Clara Barton, founder of the U.S. Red Cross. We also see Cape Cod windmills and pay a visit to Provincetown, including its picturesque harbor and its artist community.

The story of the South Shore Resource and Advocacy Center, five survivors of domestic violence, and their experience in the Massachusetts justice system.

Chronicles the creation of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's most attended fashion exhibition in history, "China: Through The Looking Glass," an exploration of Chinese-inspired Western fashions by Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton.

On the occasion of the fourty years anniversary of François Mitterand's election, a look back to the relationship between the President and artists, from admiration to manipulation.

"The acid soil of New England, its wide stretches of hardwoods, its numerous sugar maples, its rolling or mountainous character, the sunshine of its autumn weather, all these contribute to the glory of this annual display. The birches of Maine the aspens of the White Mountains, the sugar Maples of Vermont, the long rainbow of the Connecticut River Valley cutting from top to bottom through New England, the Berkshires - mention these to anyone who has traveled widely through a New England fall and you will evoke instant memories of superlative beauty." -Edwin Way Teale, Autumn across America, 1956

Features live footage from the Greed/Holy Money tour in 1986 in London and Nottingham and the A Long Slow Screw video.

Documents the true story of the final weeks of rehearsal for the Young at Heart Chorus in Northampton, MA, and many of whom must overcome health adversities to participate. Their music goes against the stereotype of their age group. Although they have toured Europe and sang for royalty, this account focuses on preparing new songs for a concert in their hometown.

Paleolithic: a mysterious and enigmatic period. Hard to grasp from today's point of view. How did people live then, how did their communities function? What does the statue of the Venus of Willendorf tell us about them? ... The Venus of Willendorf, an ingeniously crafted 29,000-year-old statue of a woman, is a naked and sensual witness to the early Stone Age. Who does he represent? Is it a real depiction of a woman or an ideal? Is it a tribute to women mothers? Analysis of the famous statue and other archaeological finds from Austria and the Czech Republic shows that Paleolithic life was more diverse than previously thought, including the role of women, who very likely performed the same activities as men. They were hunters of big game and guardians of ancient knowledge. Take us back 29,000 years to people who were a lot more like us than we think.

Thomas Hirschhorn, one of the few Swiss artists of world renown, often touches on social wounds with his provocative works. In 2013, Hirschhorn built a monument for Italian philosopher and communist Antonio Gramsci in a public housing project in the Bronx. The contentious artist collaborated with neighborhood residents whose everyday life is impacted by poverty, unemployment and crime. Conflicts and misunderstandings are bound to arise as Hirschhorn’s absolute devotion to art is confronted with the resident’s lack of prospects and fatalistic outlooks. The «Gramsci Monument» becomes a summer-long experiment where diverse worlds collide: blacks and whites, the art elite and street kids, party people and poets, politicians and philosophers. A nuanced film about art, politics and passion.

Spit Earth: Who Is Jordan Wolfson? is a feature documentary film about this controversial and divisive artist who in the ensuing five years has only solidified his stature with unnerving and provocative new works that elicit extreme reactions from both critical naysayers and vocal proponents alike. Wolfson is not content to play by the rules of a conservative self-policing art market that favors the status quo, instead preferring to make us squirm as he engages a host of lightning-rod issues facing our society today; homophobia, misogyny, racism, white nationalism, antisemitism and violence to name but a few. Wolfson is an art maker on the world stage whose immersive works take on today’s endemic virtue signaling and politically correct narratives, veritably throwing it all back into our faces.

Art-loving comedian Joe Lycett joins artists hoping to make it onto the walls of the RA Summer Exhibition 2022, the world’s largest open-submission art contest.

New York - Weltstadt der Kunst

The history of how the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art of Cuenca was created. In the mid-1950s, the Spanish collector and painter Fernando Zóbel de Ayala (1924-84) becomes fascinated by the young generation of Spanish abstract artists, so he begins to collect their works to show them to the public in Toledo. Until Gustavo Torner, a young forest engineer interested in art, proposes him to visit his city, Cuenca.

Berlin’s Museum Island, the cultural center of the German capital on the Spree river, houses a large number of art pieces from all over the globe, from the Stone Age to the present day. A walk through their great institutions to marvel at their masterpieces.

At the peak of Perestroika, in 1987, in the village of Gorki, where Lenin spent his last years, after a long construction, the last and most grandiose museum of the Leader was opened. Soon after the opening, the ideology changed, and the flow of pilgrims gradually dried up. Despite this, the museum still works and the management is looking for ways to attract visitors. Faithful to the Lenin keepers of the museum as they can resist the onset of commercialization. The film tells about the modern life of this amazing museum-reserve and its employees.