
The National Gallery in London is one of the great museums of the world with 2400 paintings from the 13th to the end of the 19th century. Almost every human experience is represented in one or the other of the paintings. The sequences of the film show the public in various galleries; the education programs, and the scholars, scientists and curators, studying, restoring and planning the exhibitions. The relation between painting and storytelling is explored.... (Full plot summary below)
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The National Gallery in London is one of the great museums of the world with 2400 paintings from the 13th to the end of the 19th century. Almost every human experience is represented in one or the other of the paintings. The sequences of the film show the public in various galleries; the education programs, and the scholars, scientists and curators, studying, restoring and planning the exhibitions. The relation between painting and storytelling is explored.
Leave your thoughts about National Gallery.
| The TelegraphTim RobeyIt’s beautifully organised, and there’s no way you could possibly watch it without learning all kinds of stuff. |
| Sight and SoundMichael AtkinsonWe're used to documentaries having a pedagogical or activist itinerary, but Wiseman's have become fastidiously unpedantic -- his simple Terence-like interest in what other human beings do and how they do it is more than enough. |
| Little White LiesMark AschWiseman shows us the “how” of art appreciation, from politics to philosophy, in a film vast in scope, and richly suggestive in insight. |
| The SkinnyPhilip ConcannonNational Gallery is a celebration of art and of anyone who loves it, shares it and protects it, and one can't help feeling inspired by being in such company. |
| GrantlandWesley MorrisSitting there with something like National Gallery, it's not the rush of time you feel. It's the rush of applied skill. |
| MetroMatt PriggeBy purely subliminal means, 'National Gallery' is downright cosmic. |
| Time OutKeith UhlichThe popular view of art is that it belongs to the masses. Wiseman casts a more skeptical eye, questioning such egalitarianism with cold, hard historical context. Yet he simultaneously acknowledges that these works live on far beyond their original purpose, even if, as the film’s bold, brilliant climax suggests, they may eventually play to an audience of none. |
| Film Journal InternationalEthan Alter[National Gallery] acknowledges the timelessness of great art while also outlining the hard work and harder choices required to make that timelessness possible. |
| RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyLike the Maysles brothers, like Shirley Clarke, like D.A. Pennebaker at his heights, Wiseman has created a body of work that proves him a great filmmaker, period. His latest picture, National Gallery, is a typically lucid, graceful and unobtrusively multi-tiered work. |
| Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternNational Gallery isn’t just about a museum full of famous pictures. It’s about the nature of art, and art’s acolytes; about the mystery of what may lie beneath a particular painting’s visible surface; about the business of art at a time when money can be scarce and attention spans can be short. |