The Edition

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has launched a webseries of artist conversations about works in its collection, with the first “season” of 20 videos released this week. Called “The Artist Project,” the effort features a diverse set of practitioners — both established and emerging, represented in the museum’s collection and not, all selected by the museum’s curators of contemporary art. The initial cohort of 20 artists includes Mickalene Thomas, John Baldessari, Kehinde Wiley, and Natalie Frank, among others.

Each artist highlights a particular work or series of works in the museum’s collection. In many cases the commentary illuminates an aspect of the artist’s practice, as in Kehinde Wiley’s discussion of John Singer Sargent or Nina Katchadourian’s commentary on early Netherlandish Painting. Less didactic than Art21’s well-known artist mini-documentaries, the project nonetheless makes for entertaining and enlightening viewing.