From The Vaults
Audiovisual materials from the Museum’s extensive archive.
About
From the Vaults presents materials from The Met’s extensive audiovisual archive, which comprises more than 10,000 films and interviews. The Museum’s holdings include rarely seen artist profiles and documentaries, process films about art-making techniques, and behind-the-scenes footage, as well as audio interviews with artists, scholars, and writers.
Episodes
Video
In the 1920s The Met began to explore filmmaking as part of its educational program, and in 1924 it released two films about Arms and Armor.
October 23, 2012
Video
Produced for the 1974 exhibition Masterpieces of Tapestry, this short form recounts the tale depicted in “The Unicorn Tapestries” and explains the symbolic meaning of these mythic creatures, including their purifying and restorative powers.
April 17, 2013
Video
From ancient Chinese sculpture to the modern Broadway stage, cats have long been a source of inspiration for artists.
January 24, 2020
Video
Sumptuously shot in richly contrasting black and white, this lyrical series of vignettes provides a window into the hidden workings of the Museum.
January 31, 2020
Each month in 2020, The Met will release three to four films from the Museum’s extensive moving-image archive.
Christopher Alessandrini, Robin Schwalb, and Stephanie Wuertz
January 31, 2020
Video
This short documentary follows the custom installation of Isamu Noguchi’s beloved sculpture Water Stone and offers a special opportunity to witness a living artist interact with staff as their work is prepared for display.
February 7, 2020
Video
This impressionistic visual diary is a quirky love letter to the Museum featuring long-time employee and artist Ray Cusie.
February 14, 2020
Video
This lyrical portrait of the Cathedral of Chartres was produced for the 1970 exhibition The Year 1200, a centerpiece of The Met’s centennial celebration.
February 21, 2020
Video
Warps, wefts, heddles, and leashes: Learn how tapestries were made, across time and across cultures, in this mesmerizing short film.
February 28, 2020
In the beginning, there was analog—and it was good
Robin Schwalb
March 2, 2020
Video
This captivating documentary about the rituals, myths, and traditions of Indonesia incorporates Old Javanese poetry, sculpture, and music alongside performances by traditional artists and healers.
March 6, 2020
Video
In this charming silent film, a drawing student’s daydream at The Met brings the ancient Greek myth of Perseus to life.
March 13, 2020
Video
“It seems funny to say it, but long before there was an ‘art world,’ there was art in the world.”
March 20, 2020
Video
The artist Louise Nevelson was known for her elaborate and monumental sculptures made of found materials such as discarded wood and scrap metal.
March 27, 2020
Video
This ghostly romance tells the story of two young lovers in medieval France.
April 3, 2020
Video
“Curator” comes from the Latin word “cura,” meaning “to take care.”
April 10, 2020
Video
“We discovered that art history was not the best handle by which to reach a kid.”
April 24, 2020
Video
This outrageous and slyly self-aware documentary revisits The Costume Institute’s 1982 exhibition La Belle Époque, from the decadence in fin-de-siècle Paris through the global pandemonium of World War I.
May 1, 2020
Video
A gem of analog animation, George Griffin’s Head offers a delightfully snarky and clever self-portrait of the artist as a not-so-young man, undone by his own cartoon surrogate.
May 8, 2020
Video
An elderly woman brings her granddaughter to a pottery studio in search of a new pitcher—but the mischievous youngster has other plans.
May 15, 2020
Video
Follow a pilgrimage across Europe to the shrine of Saint James in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
May 21, 2020
Take a deeper look at Flaherty’s enigmatic short and learn about the new score by Ben Model.
Christopher Alessandrini, Robin Schwalb, and Stephanie Wuertz
May 22, 2020
Video
The American sculptor George Grey Barnard—known as the “modern Michelangelo” for his ambitious, often larger-than-life marble sculptures—perfects several projects in this charming vignette, including two massive busts of Abraham Lincoln.
May 28, 2020
Video
This enigmatic short film presents 50 Egyptian funerary portraits from the region of Fayum.
June 26, 2020
Video
Filmed in East Harlem just after the end of World War II, In the Street is a dynamic, tender, and often humorous portrait of life in New York City.
July 2, 2020
Video
Near the end of his life, Vincent van Gogh moved from Paris to the city of Arles in southeastern France, where he experienced the most productive period of his artistic career.
July 10, 2020
Video
Perhaps the most famous wrought-iron monument is the Eiffel Tower in Paris. But you can also find wrought iron all around you on the streets of New York City, decorating balconies, staircases, windows, and doorways.
July 17, 2020
Video
The American Impressionist painter Childe Hassam is known today for his depictions of New England landscapes and portraits of life in turn-of-the-century New York.
July 24, 2020
Video
Shot on location in Istanbul, Edirne, and the Turkish countryside, and narrated by Ian McKellan, this documentary explores Süleyman (or Süleiman) the Magnificent, the longest-reigning emperor of the Ottoman empire.
July 31, 2020
Video
This short film presents rare footage of 12th-century Romanesque apse at its original site in the Castilian countryside, where dismantling the structure required meticulously numbering and crating each of its nearly 3,300 stone pieces.
August 14, 2020
Video
Let Al Jarnow’s entrancing short film take you to the beach.
August 21, 2020
Video
In this thought-provoking film, musicians such as Ellie Mannette and Pete Seeger talk shop and explain what they love about the steel drum, from its origins in Trinidad and Tobago to its status as one of the world’s most popular musical instruments.
September 3, 2020
Video
In this dazzling short animation by the Brothers Quay, learn about the illusionistic technique known as anamorphosis, in which a hidden image only becomes visible when viewed from a different angle or in a curved mirror.
September 15, 2020
Video
This atmospheric short film presents the many wonders of France’s Cathedral of Saint Peter of Beauvais, from its intricate stained glass to its soaring, vaulted interior.
October 2, 2020
Video
In this short feature, produced to accompany a 1993 LACMA exhibition of Jacob Lawrence’s series on Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, hear from the artist and those who knew him well.
October 9, 2020
Video
When this film was made a century ago, Cairo was much smaller, and to Western visitors the way of life along the Nile River appeared to resemble that of Pharaonic Egypt.
October 16, 2020
Video
Since the 1970s, the artist Charles Simonds has created enigmatic dwellings for an imaginary civilization of “Little People.”
October 23, 2020
Video
Superstition and fear ran rampant in 17th-century New England, causing many people to conjure up visions of spectres—which they believed could only be exorcised with certain rites.
October 30, 2020
Video
The painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun once wrote of the 18th century, “Women reigned then; the Revolution dethroned them.”
November 13, 2020
Video
The artist and musician Richard Lippold is perhaps best known in New York City for his spectacular Orpheus and Apollo (1962), a five-ton chandelier made of shimmering metal ribbons that once hung in the lobby of the New York Philharmonic.
November 20, 2020
Video
Flowers are more than merely decorative. People throughout time have used them as storytelling devices.
December 4, 2020
Video
Lotte Reiniger’s 1926 The Adventures of Prince Achmed is the oldest surviving full-length animated film.
December 11, 2020
Video
A self-proclaimed “collector of souls,” the American painter Alice Neel is known today for her powerful, psychologically rich portraiture.
December 18, 2020
Video
On February 7, 1963, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa made her public debut at The Met.
January 8, 2021
From the Vaults resurfaces selections the Museum’s extensive moving-image archive of over 1,500 film.
The Digital Editors
March 3, 2021
Filmmakers Margaret Murphy and Lucille Rhodes discuss their portrait of the celebrated artist—and what it was like to be painted by her.
Christopher Alessandrini and Stephanie Wuertz
March 24, 2021
Video
Using time-lapse footage of New York City, the filmmaker Hilary Harris imagines the metropolis as a living organism.
May 28, 2021
Video
“The only pleasure you can get from creating something is the pleasure you have in doing it, not the final product even,” the photographer Berenice Abbott once said of her work.
July 30, 2021
Video
Born in the Bronx on Labor Day in 1914 to recent Italian immigrants, the self-taught American painter Ralph Fasanella is known today for his bustling tableaux of working-class city life.
September 6, 2021
Two filmmakers reflect on the pioneering artist, whose feminist thought informed her understanding of the natural world.
Christopher Alessandrini and Stephanie Wuertz
October 20, 2021
Video
October 29, 2021
Video
November 12, 2021
Video
January 7, 2022
Video
The artist, educator, and activist Benny Andrews in candid conversation about his life and work.
February 4, 2022
Video
In this mesmerizing short film about Japanese pottery and porcelain, the human hand and machine work in harmony. Follow the creative process from start to finish—gathering and preparing raw clay, wedging, throwing, firing, glazing, and later presenting finished work in the showroom.
March 25, 2022
Video
April 15, 2022
Video
May 20, 2022
Filmmakers Martha Wheelock and Kay Weaver discuss their memories of living and working with the legendary photographer.
Christopher Alessandrini and Stephanie Wuertz
June 24, 2022
Video
Max Becher
November 1, 2022
Video
How do you make a monument? Produced by the Museum in 1922, this short film follows the American artist Alexander Phimister Proctor’s process of sculpting Theodore Roosevelt.
January 24, 2023
Video
May 16, 2023
Video
“When I see birches bend to left and right / Across the lines of straighter darker trees, / I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.” On April 7, 1955, Robert Frost delivered a poetry reading at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
March 26, 2024
Video
January 16
Video
Video
March 21
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