Edgar Howard

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.

A look at photographer Duane Michal's sequential photo narratives, with voiceover by Michals himself.

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).

In 2004 Checkerboard had the privilege of filming Carrie Mae Weems discussing her body of work, comprised of 17 projects spanning more than two decades (1981-2004). This dynamic presentation was accompanied by slides of the artist's photographs and excerpts from her video art. The result is a chaptered lecture guided by Weems's seductive voice and passionate presence. The viewer is transported into her world as she details what she is trying to uncover, illuminate, investigate and provoke through her lens.

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.

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 traces Ethiopian abstract artist Julie Mehretu’s preparations for her 20 year career retrospective, leading up to the installation and realization of the survey at LACMA in 2019. The artist offers extensive commentary on her work, her process, and the chronology of her career, from her graduate work at RISD (1996–97) to her current expansive multi-layered canvases.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Seminal theoretician and influential architect, Peter Eisenman is also an irrepressible sports fanatic. In this revealing look into his design for an iconic new home for the Arizona Cardinals football team, Eisenman takes us on a tour of the stadium that represents the culmination of nearly a decade of his work on this visionary sports facility.

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.

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 life and work of conceptual artist Sol LeWitt.

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.

In this enlightening visit, Holl takes us through the galleries where contemporary art is displayed beneath curving vaults admitting daylight, a tour which effectively demonstrates the convergence of space, time, and architecture.

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.

Cornell Tech features unique and innovative architecture connected by an open, public campus design. The architects share thoughts on their buildings.

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.

Celmins leads us through her 2019-20 retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, reviews photographs at her Soho studio, works on a woodcut print, and paints at her Water Mill studio. A journey through six decades of Vija Celmins’ meticulous work.