The Metropolitan Museum of Art

From ancient Chinese sculpture to the modern Broadway stage, cats have long been a source of inspiration for artists. This unusual film juxtaposes famous depictions of cats from the Museum's collection with their contemporary counterparts. Curators and staff muse on our feline friends' legendary stubbornness and implacable curiosity, their endless capacity for mischief, and ultimately how they have held our attention for millennia.

Featuring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Diana Vreeland, La Belle Epoque evokes "the beautiful era" of 1890-1914, a time in which the wealthy upper classes of the Western world gave themselves over to a life of elegance and taste-making, their eyes closed to the increasing social and political turmoil fermenting beneath the surface of polite society. The program uses period motion pictures, photographs, and sound recordings, as well as the arts and fashions of the period to supplement the spoken memories of the participating interviewees who actually lived... La Belle Epoque.

In 2019, Tony Award winning actor Gavin Creel visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time. The result was Walk On Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice, which Creel performed in 2021 at MetLiveArts and brought to a full off-Broadway run in 2023 at MCC Theater. Following Creel’s death in 2024, the Met has made his performance available for the first time.

This short documentary follows the custom installation of Isamu Noguchi's beloved sculpture "Water Stone" (1986) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it still resides, and offers a special opportunity to witness a living artist interact with staff as their work is prepared for display.

From its origins in Trinidad and Tobago to its status as one of the world’s most popular musical instruments, musicians such as Ellie Mannette and Pete Seeger talk shop and explain what they love about this extraordinary instrument.

In the 1920s the Metropolitan Museum of Art began to explore filmmaking as part of its educational program, and in 1924 it released two films about Arms and Armor. In preparation for this new undertaking, Bashford Dean, the head of the Arms and Armor department, sought the advice of Hollywood professionals D. W. Griffith and John Barrymore. "A Visit..." was especially popular and includes memorable scenes: a Gothic armor steps out of its vitrine to answer visitors' questions about the collection, a seesaw with a small child on one end and a medieval mail shirt on the other demonstrates the relatively modest weight of armor, and a fully armored knight on horseback gallops through Central Park, with Belvedere Castle (the park's weather station) rising picturesquely in the background. When actor Douglas Fairbanks Sr. viewed the film at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, he pronounced it "bully."