Edgar Howard

This 54-minute documentary traces the writer James Salter's lifelong love affair with France, unforgettably expressed in his 1967 masterpiece, A Sport and a Pastime. Salter's own reflections on his writing and life offer rich insights for reader and writer alike.

A detailed look at a remarkable artist who died in 1999 at age 85. Aspects of Burckhardt's work in photography, film, and painting are examined in interviews with Rudy Burckhardt, painter Yvonne Jacquette, and curators Robert Storr (former Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Brian Wallis (Chief Curator, International Center of Photography, New York). In his studio in New York, Burckhardt discusses his photography and its significance within its historical framework. In the woods near his summer home in Maine, the viewer sees Burckhardt's easel and painting in front of the scene he is depicting. Whether in city or country, Burckhardt appreciated and transformed the chaos he discovered.

Explorations in 21st Century American Architecture Series: Ray Kappe has long been a cult figure in the architectural scene in and around Los Angeles. In 1972, he founded the influential, avant garde Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-ARC), where many of the younger-generation architects have studied or taught.

We are in the midst of production on a one-hour film on seminal art historian John Richardson, and his work on the fourth and final volume of his biography on Picasso. Richardson shares his insights and observations on Picasso, whom he first met in the 1950s, with Shelley Wanger, his editor at Alfred A. Knopf (a division of Random House, Inc.).

Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), the most important sculptor of the first half of the 20th century, has been a fascinating and enduring influence on a generation of contemporary American artists. Insights into Brancusi’s legacy are presented by Carl Andre, Lynda Benglis, Ellsworth Kelly, Martin Puryear, Richard Serra, and Joel Shapiro, with additional commentary on Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Roy Lichtenstein, Isamu Noguchi,and Claes Oldenburg. In 1995, Anne d’Harnoncourt, Director Emeritus of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, asked Checkerboard to document the PMA’s acclaimed retrospective on Brancusi for the Museum’s archive. The resulting footage became the genesis of the documentary.

The film not only examines the thinking behind Aqua which makes the building's presence against the skyline so striking, but takes visitors to the award-winning "Brick Weave House" (2009) in a Chicago residential neighborhood, where brick walls form a large open-air "screened porch" at the house's front.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro has long been at the forefront of design with provocative exhibitions that blurred the boundaries between art and architecture. This film captures their extraordinary evolution and unique process in reimagining the public identities of Lincoln Center and the once derelict High Line railroad tracks.

French architect Jean Nouvel has long been known in Europe for his bold, shimmering glass museums, concert halls, and high-rise towers. Now the much-acclaimed new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which opened in 2006, is displaying Nouvel's remarkable talents to an American public. With a cantilevered lobby that extends 175 feet over the Mississippi River, the dark midnight-blue, aluminum-paneled structure has captivated the culturally conscious city and helped spur the rejuvenation of a once-industrial waterfront. In the tour, Nouvel takes us through three distinctive theaters he designed for the Guthrie, and out onto the cantilevered deck to view the legendary river that inspired the boldly elevated design.

This portrait of Vladimir Kagan-noted furniture designer, sculptor, and writer-documents his creative process, from initial drawings and design ideas through the creation of the Gigi and Gabriella chairs. His long career and continued inventiveness had a seminal influence on Twentieth Century design.

The Pritzker-prize winning architect Thom Mayne has been identified with muscular, bold, steel-and-glass design since the founding of his firm, Morphosis, in 1971. Through a tour of the Federal Office Building in San Francisco, Mayne proves that innovative and sustainable architecture can be introduced successfully into a building type typically considered predictable and boring.

Ground has been broken on Roosevelt Island for New York City's newest academic campus - the sustainable, high tech home of Cornell Tech, a radical reconception of graduate level engineering study for the information age. Over the next three years, a stunning complex of architecture and landscape will emerge - a unique hub of high tech research and entrepreneurial activity. Before every great piece of architecture, there is a unique journey, and since 2013, Checkerboard has been documenting the journey of Cornell Tech as it rises on Roosevelt Island. This film tells the story of how political visionaries, educational innovators, architectural designers and philanthropic benefactors have come together to create something that will have an incredible impact on New York City for decades to come.

This hour-long film explores the phenomenon of Vincent Scully, tracing his connection to New Haven & to Yale. It follows the arc of his interests in classical art & architecture to American architecture, historic preservation, & urban design in the 20th Century. Architects & former students such as David Childs, Paul Goldberger, Robert A.M. Stern, and Robert Venturi contribute to this dialogue.

The Whitney Museum of American Art presented the landmark exhibition Jeff Koons: A Retrospective from June 27 to October 19, 2014. It was the largest, most comprehensive survey of Koons’s art ever assembled, spanning four decades of his career and displaying 145 works from every series, including 13 new pieces exhibited publicly for the first time. The film follows Koons and Whitney Chief Curator, Scott Rothkopf, who conceived and organized the show, through every gallery of the exhibition. In addition, insightful interviews with Adam Weinberg, the Whitney’s Director, Robert Storr, Dean Emeritus of the Yale School of Art, and Michelle Kuo, Editor of Artforum, help to deepen the investigation into Koon’s art and process.

Cameras record artist Ellsworth Kelly as he creates sculptures for the US Embassy in Beijing. With all his equipment around him, Ellsworth undertakes a big task as his creates he next masterpieces.

After a few seconds of footage from 1968 of the artist working, this powerful film moves into 1976, providing an intimate look at the enigmatic abstract painter, Brice Marden. Shot in 16mm shortly after Marden's 1975 exhibition at the Guggenheim, this film reveals, through interviews with Marden and numerous shots of his preparations and working process, the depth of intellectual creativity behind his works.

Developed as an adjunct to the exhibition Dive Deep: Eric Fischl and the Process of Painting, this 35-minute film is a co-production with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in Philadelphia. It is comprised of excerpts from interviews conducted by PAFA Director Harry Philbrick and Associate Curator Jodi Throckmorton of the San Jose Museum of Art in California at Fischl’s Long Island and New York City studios. The film charts the course of the artist’s creative process from his days as a student at California Institute of the Arts to the present.

James Rosenquist was one of the leading figures in the pivotal Pop Art movement. The film follows the trajectory of the artist's career from his 1960's juxtaposed images of American life, to larger concerns on politics and the environment, and finally to kaleidoscopic depictions of galaxies and universes far beyond our perception.

Yvonne Jacquette: Autumn Expansion, filmed in 1981, explores the artist's creative process as she creates a triptych that is approximately 26 feet wide, commissioned by the General Services Administration for the Federal Building and Post Office in Bangor, Maine.

The film features artist Frank Stella as he walks us through his 2012 exhibition “Black Aluminum Copper Paintings” at L&M Arts. The film also features commentary on Frank’s life and career from Adam Weinberg (Alice Pratt Brown Director, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY) and Ann Temkin (Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Museum of Modern Art, NY).

The life and work of conceptual artist Sol LeWitt.