Want to Learn Art History? Here Are 7 Absolutely Classic TV Series That Will Give You a Solid Education—and Keep You on the Edge of Your Seat

If ever there was a time to hunker down with a good
old-fashioned TV series, surely that time is now. What’s more, you
can combine your love of binge-watching with your love of art
history with these absolutely delightful and informative
programs.

Here, we’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite art-related
series.

“Ways of Seeing” (1972)

Total Time to Watch: Two
hours 

Where to Watch: YouTube

Why You Should Watch: Of
all the achievements of “Ways of Seeing,” the writer John Berger’s
hugely influential BBC series from 1972, perhaps what’s most
impressive is that it still feels remarkably relevant nearly five
decades later. The tropes upended in the late critic and novelist’s
essayistic trips through the canon are still being grappled with in
galleries, museums,  and in publications like this one
today.

Berger’s four-part series is
literally required viewing in many art history classrooms, but it
doesn’t feel like homework; it’s genuinely enjoyable. It’s also a
particularly good watch in this screen-mediated moment,
considering, as it does, technology’s impact on the experience of
art. 

—Taylor Dafoe

“Sister Wendy’s American
Collection” (2001)

Total Time to Watch: Six
hours

Where to Watch: PBS
or buy the
video

Why You Should Watch: In the 1990s, the South African nun Sister
Wendy became a breakout star on the BBC
for her awe-filled
visits to art museums around the world. The Roman Catholic nun mused with infectious
delight about everything from Michelangelo’s Pietà to David
Hockney’s portrait of his male lover by a pool (“art only works if
it comes from love,” she said of the painting).

In 2001, she toured the US for
the PBS series Sister
Wendy’s American Collection, where she accessibly expounded on Grant
Wood’s American
Gothic at the Art
Institute of Chicago, Polynesian wood carvings at the Met, and
beyond. No work of art is unworthy of contemplation or beneath
Wendy (who all the while maintained her vow of poverty), making
this show a refreshing reminder of the pleasures of experiencing
art without pretension or pricetags. 

—Rachel
Corbett

“Raiders of the Lost Art”
(2014–2016) 

Total Time to Watch: 8
hrs 45 minutes 

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime (Season 1 & 2)

Why You Should Watch: Don’t let the kitschy name turn you away! This
fast-paced series tells the fascinating stories behind artworks
which have disappeared through thievery, oversight, and other
mysterious circumstances. From vanishing Vermeers to global hunts
for Fabergé Eggs—the episodes are filled with a shocking number of
experts and art historical details, while the narrator’s dramatic
intonation and suspenseful score lend it an air of guilty pleasure
watching. 

—Katie
White 

“Fake Or Fortune”
(2011–19)

Total Time to Watch: 31
hours

Where to Watch: BBC One
or Amazon
Prime

Why You Should Watch: Each episode of this BBC series, copresented by
the journalist Fiona Bruce and the art historian Philip Mould,
investigates the authenticity of an artwork.

The show dives into the nitty
gritty of provenance, forensic and material analysis, and style to
determine the answer to the titular question: Is it a fake, or will
it be worth a fortune? From an inquiry into a Monet rejected by the
Wildenstein Institute, to the recovery of a long-lost Giacometti,
there are eight seasons of episodes to trawl through, and it makes
the difficult work of art authentication look easy enough to try
for yourself. Happy hunting—but beware, you’ll think you’re seeing
sleepers everywhere.

—Naomi Rea

“Hidden Hands: A Different
HIstory of Modernism” (1995-96) 

Total Time to Watch: 4
hours 

Where to Watch: YouTube

Why You Should Watch: I
found this series while researching the references in the art of
Agnes Pelton, just before her show
at the Whitney shuttered due to
lockdown. Each of its four episodes focuses on one overlooked
aspect of modern art: Cold War politics in episode one
(“Art and the
CIA”); modern ideas of
hygiene and health in episode two (“A Clean White
World”); and
collaboration with the Nazis during the French occupation in
episode three (“Painting With the
Enemy”).

But it’s the fourth episode,
“Is There Anyone Out
There?”, that is
probably the most grabby, giving a nice capsule history of the
impact of Theosophy and other New Age philosophies on the early
moderns. It’s from the ‘90s (and looks very ‘90s!), and doesn’t dig
into the overlooked, spiritually inspired female artists who’ve
fired the imagination in recent years like Georgiana
Houghton and
HIlma af
Klint. But it still
gives great context for references that I didn’t know, like Piet
Mondrian’s early Symbolist “Evolution” triptych or Wassily Kandinsky’s lost
spiritualist photos. Very fun and very
interesting.  

—Ben
Davis 

“Civilisation” (1969)

Total Time to Watch: 11
hours 

Where to Watch: Youtube

Why You Should Watch: Kenneth Clark’s distinguished career as a
scholar, museum director, and popularizer of complex ideas finds
its most distilled expression in this 13-part BBC series about what
he calls “civilization,” which is different from civilization per
se. In this case, it’s his feelings and observations that count,
and instead of an objective history, we get Clark’s “personal
view,” as the opening titles of the first episode admit.

There are problems with
Civilisation. It is too sure of itself and a little too
refined, sometimes othering of non-Western cultures, and can be
curiously narrow in its interests, despite the fact that it covers
about 1900 years of history. But there are enormous pleasures and
insights in Clark’s sweeping worldview and his gentleman’s,
19th-century sensibility. He ties together far-ranging ideas to
present a rigorous and largely convincing picture of the history of
the world. Can you imagine anyone even attempting that today? Sure,
Clark offers only one perspective. But it’s richer than most
others. 

—Pac Pobric

“The Power of Art” 
(2006)

Total Time to Watch: 8
hours

Where to Watch: YouTube or buy the box
set

Why You Should Watch: This now-famous trek through art history with
eminent author and historian Simon Schama is equal parts
entertaining and enlightening. Schama takes viewers through eight
seminal artworks and the fascinating lives of the
artists—Caravaggio, Bernini,
Rembrandt, David, Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso, and Rothko—behind
them.

The series employs a mix of
dramatic reconstruction, fascinating photography, and Schama’s
inimitable blend of scholarly insight with compelling storytelling.
Viewers are transported from Baroque Rome to revolutionary France,
and from Civil War-era Spain to the 1950s in New York, among other
locales.

—Eileen
Kinsella

“Shock of the Nude”
(2020)

Total Time to Watch: 2
hours 

Where to Watch: Youtube or BBC Two

Why You Should Watch: Look, nothing will endear an art-history series
to me quicker than seeing a warning that it’s age-restricted based
on YouTube’s community guidelines. But a close second factor is the
opportunity to spend time with a deeply knowledgeable and endlessly
charming scholar as she walks through a fascinating subject in a
cheeky (no pun intended), down-to-earth way. 

Mary Beard’s
Shock of the Nude
checks all these boxes. Beard, one
of the world’s foremost classicists, uses the show to interrogate
the primacy of the nude figure in Western art through the
centuries. No one else could so cogently tease out the form’s
aesthetic importance, while simultaneously asking a question I’ve
considered in many museums more times than I should admit: Despite
its merits, is this artwork here largely because we like to look at
hot naked people under the guise of higher
learning? 

—Tim Schneider

“The Joy of Painting”
(1983–94)

Total Time to Watch: 201
and a half hours

Where to Watch: YouTube, with limited episodes on Netflix 

Why You Should Watch: Okay, it’s not art
history, but it’s Bob
Ross! A treasure of public
television, Ross makes painting look effortless, scraping his
palette knife across canvases to create the “happy little trees”
that inhabit his kitschy masterpieces. He narrates the entire
process in dulcet tones, his glorious permed afro bobbing back and
forth as he deftly transforms indistinct blotches of color into
recognizable landscapes through the magic of wet-on-wet oil
painting. (The technique was developed by Ross’s predecessor,
German painter Bill Alexander, whose
show, The Magic of
Oil Painting,
aired on PBS from 1974 to
1982.)

Despite the fact that its last
episode was filmed more than 25 years ago, The Joy of Painting has retained a loyal fanbase. When the
Emmy-winning series was added to YouTube in
2015, it had a
viral moment, streaming live on Twitch for tens of thousands of viewers. Three years
later, meditation and sleep app Calm added the
instructional TV show to its
lineup, sans visuals, in the hopes that Ross’s soothing monologue
might help lull users to sleep.

—Sarah Cascone

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Classic TV Series That Will Give You a Solid Education—and Keep You
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