RECENT RELEASES
Vija Celmins: To Fix the Image in Memory
For more than six decades, Vija Celmins has been creating exquisitely detailed paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints depicting natural imagery, including...
Vladimir Kagan: A Life of Design
This portrait of Vladimir Kagan–noted furniture designer, sculptor, and writer, documents his creative process, from initial drawings and design ideas...
Julie Mehretu: Palimpsest
Julie Mehretu has been an internationally acclaimed artist for the past two decades. Her work is featured in museums around...
James Rosenquist: Up Close
James Rosenquist was one of the leading figures in the pivotal Pop Art movement. Together with such legendary artists as...
Frank Stella: Black Aluminum Copper
Frank Stella, one of the most important living artists, is still producing vital work after more than six decades of...
PAINTING & SCULPTURE
On The Wings Of Brancusi
Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), the most important sculptor of the first half of the 20th century, has been a fascinating and...
Vija Celmins: To Fix the Image in Memory
For more than six decades, Vija Celmins has been creating exquisitely detailed paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints depicting natural imagery, including...
Eric Fischl: The Process of Painting
Developed as an adjunct to the exhibition Dive Deep: Eric Fischl and the Process of Painting, this 35-minute film is...
Yvonne Jacquette: Autumn Expansion
The American painter and printer Yvonne Jacquette is best known for her aerial landscapes of cities and towns, which incorporate...
Vladimir Kagan: A Life of Design
This portrait of Vladimir Kagan–noted furniture designer, sculptor, and writer, documents his creative process, from initial drawings and design ideas...
Alex Katz: Five Hours
When Alex Katz paints one of his large, signature paintings, it is an act of the utmost concentration, a performance...
Ellsworth Kelly: Fragments
"In my paintings I'm not inventing; my ideas come from constantly investigating how things look."- ElIsworth Kelly Ellsworth Kelly is...
Ellsworth Kelly & Jack Shear: Kindred Aesthetics, Mt. Lebanon Shaker Village
The Shaker movement in America was founded by Ann Lee, a member of a religious sect near Manchester, England, that...
Jeff Koons: The Whitney Retrospective
The Whitney Museum of American Art presented the landmark exhibition Jeff Koons: A Retrospective from June 27 to October 19,...
Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawings
During the four decades of his career, Sol LeWitt produced more than 1200 wall drawings using a deliberately limited repertoire...
The Drawings of Roy Lichtenstein
This film was produced on the occasion of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It...
Roy Lichtenstein: Reflections
Pop Art draws upon the style and imagery of advertising and popular culture to challenge our preconceptions about the nature...
Roy Lichtenstein: Tokyo Brushstrokes
This film offers comprehensive documentation on a major public sculpture by the Pop master, Roy Lichtenstein. Just as he drew...
Brice Marden
After a few seconds of footage from 1968 of the artist working, this powerful film moves into 1976, providing an...
Julie Mehretu: Palimpsest
Julie Mehretu has been an internationally acclaimed artist for the past two decades. Her work is featured in museums around...
The Phillips Collection
"Everyone who loves early art loves The Phillips Collection and envies Washington for having it." -- Robert Hughes, Art Critic,...
Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism
In 1989, William S. Rubin, then Director Emeritus of the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Painting and Sculpture, organized...
John Richardson: The Art of Picasso 1927-1973
The celebrated art historian John Richardson has devoted his life to writing the definitive biography of Pablo Picasso. This film,...
James Rosenquist: Up Close
James Rosenquist was one of the leading figures in the pivotal Pop Art movement. Together with such legendary artists as...
Kiki Smith: Squatting the Palace
This film takes a circular approach to an artist who works in overlapping spirals of creative energy. Smith works in...
Frank Stella: Black Aluminum Copper
Frank Stella, one of the most important living artists, is still producing vital work after more than six decades of...
ARCHITECTURE
The Architecture and Art of Cornell Tech
Cornell Tech features unique and innovative architecture connected by an open, public campus design. The architects share thoughts on the...
Inventing Cornell Tech: The Vision
Ground has been broken on Roosevelt Island for New York City's newest academic campus - the sustainable, high tech home...
Cornell Tech: Sustainability
“The architecture and campus were designed with the challenge of producing great architecture with the highest standards of sustainability and...
Cornell Tech: The Realization
In its first academic year at the new campus, Cornell Tech is fulfilling the goals and aspirations created at its...
Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Reimagining Lincoln Center and the High Line
Diller Scofidio + Renfro has long been at the forefront of design. The interdisciplinary design firm, founded in 1979, first...
Studio Gang Architects: Aqua Tower
Explorations in 21st Century American Architecture Series Chicago is famous for its role in fostering modern architecture, owing to the...
Steven Holl: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Bloch Building
Landmarks in 21st Century American Architecture Series Generally acknowledged as one of the most artistically-minded architects practicing today, Steven Holl...
Philip Johnson: Diary of an Eccentric Architect
"My place in New Canaan is…a diary of an eccentric architect." Thus begins a fascinating look into the mind of...
Ray Kappe: California Modern Master, Forty Years of Modular Evolution
Explorations in 21st Century American Architecture Series Ray Kappe was a cult figure in the architectural scene in and around...
KieranTimberlake: Loblolly House (2007) and Cellophane House (2008)
Explorations in 21st Century American Architecture Series KieranTimberlake, an architectural firm based in Philadelphia, is a recognized leader of the...
Daniel Libeskind: Denver Art Museum, Frederic C. Hamilton Building
Landmarks in 21st Century American Architecture Series Architect Daniel Libeskind first gained worldwide attention when his haunting, zigzag-shaped Jewish Museum...
Thom Mayne: U.S. Federal Office Building, San Francisco
Landmarks in 21st Century American Architecture Series The Pritzker-prize winning architect Thom Mayne has been identified with muscular, bold, steel-and-glass...
Jean Nouvel: Guthrie Theater
Landmarks in 21st Century American Architecture Series French architect Jean Nouvel has long been known in Europe for his bold,...
Reconsidering Postmodernism
A co-production with the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art. Co-sponsored by the Schools of Architecture at the University of...
Vincent Scully: An Art Historian Among Architects
Explorations in 21st Century American Architecture Series Vincent Scully is likely the best-known living art historian in the United States...
The Architecture of Gwathmey Siegel: In Search of Clarity
Charles Gwathmey has held steadfast to the spirit of modernism in his architecture from the day he successfully built his...
Sir John Soane: An English Architect, An American Legacy
All great art engages in a dialogue with the past. Architecture is no exception, as this film shows in its...
Robert A.M. Stern: 15 Central Park West and the History of the New York Apartment House
Explorations in 21st Century American Architecture Series Even during the Great Recession of 2008, one new apartment house in New...
Yoshio Taniguchi: The New Museum of Modern Art
Landmarks in 21st Century American Architecture Series Architect Yoshio Taniguchi, revered in his native country of Japan for the design...
PHOTOGRAPHY
Tina Barney: Speaking of Art
Since 1975 Tina Barney has been producing large-scale photographs of family and friends. Her meticulous tableaux chronicle the complexity of...
Rudy Burckhardt: The Climate of New York and Man in the Woods
The Climate Of New York (1980): In 1935, Rudy Burckhardt moved to New York from Basel, Switzerland, with Edwin Denby,...
Harry Callahan: Eleanor and Barbara
This film documents Harry Callahan, one of the great masters of twentieth-century photography. Known for his repertoire of subjects -...
Ralph Gibson: Photographer/Book Artist
For more than forty years, Ralph Gibson has served as one of the few truly independent forces within the field...
Jan Groover: Tilting at Space
Jan Groover is widely recognized as one of the preeminent fine arts photographers. Her work has been compared to that...
Ellsworth Kelly & Jack Shear: Kindred Aesthetics, Mt. Lebanon Shaker Village
The Shaker movement in America was founded by Ann Lee, a member of a religious sect near Manchester, England, that...
Duane Michals: 1939-1997
A haunting and evocative film by the photographic master of mystic innuendo, Duane Michals. This film is divided into sections,...
Barbara Morgan: Everything is Dancing
"How wonderful to behold a person who has developed all capacities because her practice of living as a whole being....
Aaron Siskind
"Both the object and the idea are in varying degrees of harmony and dominance… Almost inevitably there are tensions in...
John Szarkowski: A Life in Photography
For nearly thirty years, from 1962 to 1991, John Szarkowski served as Director of the Department of Photography at the...
John Szarkowski on Ansel Adams: Speaking of Art Lecture
"Szarkowksi's thinking, whether Americans know it or not, has become our thinking about photography." - US News & World Report,...
John Szarkowski on Eugène Atget: Speaking of Art Lecture
"Szarkowksi's thinking, whether Americans know it or not, has become our thinking about photography." - US News & World Report,1990...
John Szarkowski on John Szarkowski: Speaking of Art Lecture
Prior to accepting the position of Director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in 1962,...
Carrie Mae Weems: Speaking of Art Lecture
In 2004 Checkerboard had the privilege of filming Carrie Mae Weems discussing her body of work, comprised of 17 projects...
LIT / MUSIC / DANCE
Billy Collins: On the Road with the Poet Laureate
Billy Collins is perhaps the first American poet since Robert Frost to enjoy both critical and popular acclaim. This 59-minute...
Bart Cook: Choreographer
Bart Cook became a Principal Dancer with New York City Ballet in 1979. He worked extensively with Jerome Robbins, Associate...
Barry Harris: The Spirit of Bebop
This intimate portrait of modern jazz pianist, Barry Harris, becomes a historic walk with some of the best-known jazz musicians...
The Paris Review…: Early Chapters
In the summer of 1953, an expatriated trio of young Americans -- Peter Matthiessen, Harold "Doc" Humes and George Plimpton...
James Salter: A Sport and a Pastime
This 54-minute documentary traces the writer James Salter's lifelong love affair with France, unforgettably expressed in his 1967 masterpiece, A Sport...