Production still from the Art in the Twenty-First Century Season 7 episode, "Fiction." © Art21, Inc. 2014.

Art in the Twenty-First Century

Season 7

Providing unique access to some of the most compelling artists of our time, Season 7 features a dozen artists from the United States, Europe, and Latin America, transporting viewers to artistic projects across the country and around the world. In locations as diverse as a Bronx public housing development, a military testing facility in the Nevada desert, a jazz festival in Sweden, and an activist neighborhood in Mexico, the artists reveal intimate and personal insights into their lives and creative processes. Season 7 artists create socially and politically engaged art, draw upon the influence of family and youthful experiences, and experiment with both form and medium.

Included in the season are Tania Bruguera, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Leonardo Drew, Omer Fast, Katharina Grosse, Thomas Hirschhorn, Elliott Hundley, Graciela Iturbide, Joan Jonas, Wolfgang Laib, Trevor Paglen, and Arlene Shechet.

Major underwriting for Season 7 of Art in the Twenty-First Century is provided by National Endowment for the Arts, PBS, Agnes Gund, Bloomberg, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, Toby Devan Lewis, and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

Season 7 premiered in October 2014 on PBS.

Broadcast Episodes


  • 54:43

    Why do we break with some traditions and perpetuate others? Artists in this episode use life experiences and family heritage to explore new aesthetic terrain.

  • 54:23

    What makes a compelling story? How do artists disrupt everyday reality in the service of revealing subtler truths? This episode features artists who explore the virtues of ambiguity, mix genres, and merge aesthetic disciplines to discern not simply what stories mean, but how and why they come to have meaning.

  • 54:35

    How do artists push beyond what they already know and readily see? Can acts of engagement and exploration be works of art in themselves?

    In this episode, artists use their practices as tools for personal and intellectual discovery, simultaneously documenting and producing new realities in the process.

  • 54:35

    How do artists make the invisible visible? What hidden elements persist in their work? Is it the artist’s role to reveal them, or not?

    In this episode, artists share some of the secrets that are intrinsic to their work.