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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Inside the Met

Streaming on PBS

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art picked an inopportune year to turn 150. On March 13, 2020, the Met closed its doors for the first (extended) time in its history. And in the wake of the George Floyd killing, it faced a social-justice reckoning. The anniversary documentary Inside the Met, directed by Ian Denyer, quickly evolved into a film about how the coronavirus and the Black Lives Matter movement affected the largest art museum in the Americas. Wandering through its halls in normal times, “you see the tip of an iceberg,” says the conservator Hermes Knauer, “when seven-eighths of it is underground.” This three-part series gives viewers at least another eighth to contend with. —J.V.

Photo courtesy of PBS.