YouTube Is Filled With Quirky and Informative Videos From Museums Around the Globe. We Watched Hours of Them to Bring You the Best

As we hunker down in our homes for the foreseeable future, we
are becoming increasingly dependent on the internet for our
cultural diets. Fortunately, YouTube has an extensive collection of
videos from just about every museum you can think of—and many are
hidden gems we might never have otherwise discovered.

From behind-the-scenes peeks at the world’s most prestigious
collections to quirky interviews with top contemporary artists, you
can connect with the art world from the comfort of your own home,
just by pressing play.

We scoured the video service for the most delightful and
informative videos, put out by museums for your viewing
pleasure.

Recreating Ukiyo-e
Hairstyles

From: The Art Institute of Chicago

Date posted: December 18,
2018

Length: 5:19

What It Is: Cultivating
an ideal beauty—both in oneself and in art—was at the heart of
Edo-era Japanese culture during the 17th to 19th centuries. Actors,
geishas, and courtesans attempted to embody this perfect
bijin (beauty) through a harmony of
cosmetics, clothing, and hairstyle, which we see captured in
Ukiyo-e paintings. In this video, watch as 90-year-old Minami
Tomiko creates a series of the era’s intricate hairstyles, which
are then presented alongside artworks with similar hairstyles in
the museum’s collections. 

Why It’s Worth Your Watch: Minami is one of the few remaining yūsoku
hairstylists. Her grandmother opened a hair salon in Kyoto during
the Meiji era (1868–1912), and there styled everyone from
upper-class ladies to young dancers. Miami trained under her own
mother for 30 years. Set only to music, the video is a hypnotizing
glimpse of the past living in the present, in which we can better
understand how fashion, cosmetics, theater, and art all interlocked
to create the dazzling beauty of Japan’s “floating
world.”  

— Katie White

John Baldessari on René
Magritte 

From: Los Angeles County
Museum of Art

Date posted: August 17,
2016

Length: 1:39

What It Is: A popular
entry in the museum’s 25-video-strong “Artists on Art” series, this
short piece sees the late beloved artist John Baldessari—a giant of
the California art scene who died in January—spend some quality time with René
Magritte’s The Treachery
of Images. Better known
as This is Not a
Pipe, the painting is
one of the most famous works in the museum
collection. 

Why It’s Worth Your Watch: The great conceptual artist marvels over how
Magritte’s Surrealist masterpiece, painted two years before
Baldessari was born, calls into question the very definition of
art—a lifelong goal in his own practice. “I find it an incredibly
intriguing painting because it has none of the earmarks of
painting. There’s no brushmarks. It’s like a commercial artist has
done it,” Baldessari says. “Saying this is not a pipe, the idea of
denial, this is not what you think it is—I love that that’s a
question that really intrigues me and informs a lot of my work… If
I could do that in my own art, I would feel really accomplished. It
would bring up a whole question about what art is.” Also, did you
know that Baldessari had a collection of 50 pipes? 

—Sarah
Cascone

Behind the Scenes at the
Cloisters

From: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Date posted: July 10, 2010

Length: 11:28

What It Is: A tour of the
Met’s most cloistered (I’m sorry) location, in Fort Tryon Park in
New York. The Cloisters are an absolute gem: a shrine to medieval
art built from a 12th-century French monastery that was taken apart
and delivered, piece by piece, to the Inwood section of Manhattan.
That story alone is remarkable. But on top of that, the museum is
full of masterpieces. As Peter Barnet, the former curator in charge
of the collection, says in this video, the Cloisters’ stunning
works rival even the paintings and sculptures in the Met’s main
building on Fifth Avenue.

Why It’s Worth Your Watch: If you’ve never been to the Cloisters, or if
you have been and want to understand it more fully, there’s no
better place to begin. Barnet, along with former Met director
Thomas Campbell, provides an overview of how the museum was built,
along with commentary on some of its greatest artworks, including
the Unicorn Tapestries, the Merode Altarpiece, and the very
cloister at the heart of the building. 

—Pac Pobric

 Ulay’s Pearls of
Wisdom

From: Louisiana Channel,
Denmark

Date posted: July 2017

Length: 2:57

What It Is: The
performance artist Ulay, who died this year, gives some
down-to-earth advice to younger artists who want to follow in his
footsteps (or those of his former collaborator and partner Marina
Abramovic). The short interview with Ulay is part of an ongoing
strand with artists including Ed Ruscha, Ai Weiwei, and Candice
Breitz, produced by the digital channel of the Louisiana Museum of
Modern Art in Denmark.

Why It’s Worth Your Watch: If you want to really connect with an audience
“then don’t kiss their asses,” Ulay warns. You have leave them
wanting extra—around 30 percent more, to be exact—he advised. To
find inspiration, don’t look for it in art school or go too often
to museums and galleries where everything is readymade. He
suggested instead: “Go behind Central Station” and find it in real
life.  

—Javier Pes

MoMA’s Reopening
Magic 

From: Museum of Modern Art 

Date posted: September
20, 2019

Length: 7:11

What It Is: A fascinating
in-depth look at the Herculean effort involved in the MoMA’s
closure, renovation, and re-opening this past fall that resulted in
a radical new re-hang done in less than a year’s time. As someone
who attended the press preview day and was stunned at what I saw,
it is impressive and fun to see both the monumental and minute
details that went into this turnaround.

Why It’s Worth Your Watch: I love that this video series (and there are
quite a few of these behind-the-scenes documentaries on MoMA’s
YouTube channel) ranges from ironworkers hoisting and balancing
multi-ton Richard Serra sculptures, to Betye Saar questioning the
necessity of X-ray analysis of her newly re-hung works, to a
security guard talking about keeping priceless artworks safe while
standing in front of a massive Claude Monet mural. At a time when
many of us are #WFH and looking for something to latch on to—and
the museum is not open for at least the next several weeks—these
videos are not only engrossing but will likely inspire viewers to
run back to MoMA when as soon as we can.

—Eileen
Kinsella

David Hockney on Vincent
Van Gogh

From: The Van
Gogh Museum

Date posted: March 4, 2019

Length: 8:11

What It Is: A delightful bit of
extemporization from the art world’s favorite octogenarian,
speaking on the occasion of his exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum
in the Netherlands. Hockney has often spoke of finding inspiration
in the swirling colors and inventive use of space that define Van
Gogh’s painting, and this video shows him speaking about the
artwork interspersed with archival footage of Hockney at work over
the decades, and the places that inspired both artists.

Why It’s Worth Your Watch: Honestly, I’d
watch David Hockney read assembly directions for an IKEA bookshelf,
so imagine my delight at discovering a video of him narrating
passages from Van Gogh’s own diaries in his lilting British accent,
so clearly delighting in the words and images of an artist he so
admired. Add to his charming voice the archival photographs that
show up on screen of a floppy-haired younger Hockney at work in his
studio, traipsing through the gardens of England, or sitting
poolside in a (much too short) pair of swimtrunks, and I’m
sold.

—Caroline Goldstein

How Nam June Paik Predicted the
Future

From: Tate

Date posted: December 20, 2019

Length: 4:24

What It Is: A bite-size
look at five ways that Nam June Paik, the late Korean-American
artist who was the subject of an eye-opening retrospective at Tate
that closed in February, predicted the future. Pouring over his
writings, the narrator explains convincingly that Paik seems to
have foreseen none other than: the internet, video art, the climate
crisis, global media, and smartphones. 

Why It’s Worth Your Watch: The cut-together clips of vintage ‘70s
television shows, news broadcasts, and commercials that inspired
much of Paik’s work is alone worth the price of admission (which
happens to be free). But what will leave a lasting impression is
the artist’s words. Way back in 1974, Paik predicted the creation
of “electronic superhighways” that would enable “conferences
between people in different locations via color video.” Although
others had previously put forth the idea of a digital network, Paik
was, according to Tate, the first person to propose that its
primary purpose would be for communication. I’ve never been one to
believe that all artists are automatically soothsayers who can see
the future far more clearly than lay people, but, well, he really
hit the nail on the head with that one, no?

—Julia Halperin

 A Walking Tour of Edward
Hopper’s New York

From: The Whitney Museum of American Art

Date posted: May 22, 2013

Length: 5:01

What It Is: Here, Carter
Foster—then the curator of drawings at the Whitney and now deputy
director of the Blanton Museum at the University of Texas—takes
viewers on a jaunt through the West Village, stopping to comment on
the street corners and lunch counters frequented by Edward Hopper,
including his walk-up studio—74 steps!—and the various storefront
facades that inspired his famous painting Nighthawks.

Why It’s Worth Your Watch: Foster is a charming, informative walking-tour
host, and the brilliant edit lets the real buildings in the Village
crossfade into the Hopper paintings, quite viscerally bringing the
masterpieces to life. And seeing the bustling shops and restaurants
along Greenwich Avenue teeming with happy, healthy New Yorkers is
actually a healing balm if you’re exiled out of the city or trapped
in your apartment for the foreseeable future. 

—Nate Freeman

Jane’s Addiction

From: Rijksmuseum

Date posted: August 14,
2019

Length: 3:24

What It Is: The head of
the print room at the Rijksmuseum, Jane Turner, has her own mini
series amusingly titled “Jane’s Addiction” in which she shares
interesting tidbits that her research turns up about works on
paper, prints, and drawings in the collection. 

Why It’s Worth Your Watch: In this video, Turner investigates a
funny-looking plant recorded in a collection of 750 watercolors
commissioned by Emperor Rudolph II of Prague. The emperor asked his
private physician, Anselmus de Boodt, to record the natural history
world around him, including animals, birds, and flowers. The
physician also sneaked some mythical creations into the pack,
including a dragon and a weird hybrid fish-horse thing. When Turner
came across a plant with little skulls on its leaves she assumed it
was one of these fantastical creations, but on further research
discovered that it is actually a snapdragon plant, and the seed
pods of which look just like mini skulls. Who says botany has to be
dull?

—Naomi Rea

Fred Wilson’s Museum
Interventions

From: San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art

Date posted: June 3,
2019

Length: 3:06

What It Is: In an excerpt
from a 2015 interview and studio visit, multidisciplinary artist
Fred Wilson succinctly tells us how and why, in the 1990s, he began
re-installing institutions’ own collections in a way that brought
their hidden biases into plain (if jarring) view. 

Why It’s Worth Your Watch: What makes SFMOMA’s video series special is the
way it elevates the blue-flame thinking of great artists with
dynamic filmmaking and editing. In general, the museum breaks
in-depth interviews into bite-sized, thematic segments each posted
as individual videos rather than sprawling odysseys. Here, Wilson
dissects one of the museum sector’s central issues in the same run
time as a pop song, while SFMOMA’s team complements the interview
with a pitch-perfect musical score and both stills and video of some of the interventions
in question—including when Wilson inserted a whipping post into a
gallery celebrating fine 19th-century American
furniture.

—Tim Schneider

Building a James Turrell
Installation

From: The Guggenheim Museum

Date posted: December 8, 2016

Length: 4:42

What It Is: Exhibition
designers and production specialists at the Guggenheim reveal how
they installed James Turrell’s Aten Reign, turning the museum’s iconic rotunda into an
immersive skyscape for the artist’s 2013
retrospective.   

Why It’s Worth Your Watch: For those who walk into an exhibition and
wonder not how the art was made but how it was installed, the
Guggenheim’s channel is for you. The museum—an architectural marvel
but a challenging place to show art—takes you behind the scenes
into how its most ambitious rotunda installations were assembled,
from the network of criss-crossing tubes that made up
Motonaga Sadamasa’s
Work (Water)
in the 2013 exhibition
“Gutai: Splendid
Playground,” to Maurizio
Cattelan’s 2012 show “All,” in which all of the artist’s works
were suspended from the
ceiling. But Turrell’s
immersive installation gets the vote here because of the design
ingenuity that so perfectly united Turrell’s vision with Frank
Lloyd Wright’s. 

—Taylor Dafoe

Kerry James Marshall on the
Meaning of Process

From: Los Angeles Museum
of Contemporary Art

Date posted: March 31,
2017

Length: 2:56

What It Is: The museum’s
“Process” video series visits artists in their studios and
interviews them about how they make their work. In this
installment, Kerry James Marshall gives a peek inside his Chicago
studio on the occasion of his traveling 2017 retrospective
“Mastry.”

Why It’s Worth Your Watch: Some discussions of process can be dry and
technical. But Marshall lucidly explains how, for him, process
consists of both making physical paintings and of reimagining the
paradigm of what painting can be. “You can orient your actions so
you can get into the institutions that are already established or
you can orient your actions so that you establish a new place that
sits alongside it,” he says in the video. For Marshall, both were
necessary: “Yes, I like this museum, but I want to be in this
museum too.”

—Rachel Corbett

Learn to Paint Like Yayoi
Kusama 

From: Museum of Modern
Art

Date posted: March 22,
2017

Length: 20:07

What It Is: This, the
most popular episode of MoMA’s YouTube “In the Studio” series with
three million views, has host Corey D’Augustine, a painter and
conservator, demonstrating the ins and outs of creating a
composition like Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese painter these days best
known for her mirrored rooms.  

Why It’s Worth Your Watch: Because D’Augustine conjures the painting in
front of your eyes, you really get a pretty magical sense of how
Kusama’s all-over compositions are made, and what kind of effort
goes into them.

—Nan Stewart

The post YouTube Is Filled With Quirky and Informative
Videos From Museums Around the Globe. We Watched Hours of Them to
Bring You the Best appeared first on artnet News.