Art21’s award-winning digital film series, New York Close Up, is devoted to capturing early-career artists living and working in New York City.  Providing a unique window into the next wave of art-making in the city, Art21 collaborates with artists to tell stories about their creative processes, diverse backgrounds, and daily realities. Produced in Art21’s intimate signature style, the series is a public invitation to follow artists into the private spaces where they work, play, and interact, giving audiences unparalleled access to some of the city’s most intriguing creators.

Artworks by these artists advance fresh methods to disciplines like painting, sculpture, photography, performance, and video, while often blurring traditional boundaries between mediums and tastes. Mirroring that rich variety is the series’ own visual and narrative diversity. Directed by local independent filmmakers who work closely with the artist-subjects, the films span the range of contemporary documentary style, from animation to classic “cinema verite” to hybrids that combine fact and fiction. With Art21’s cameras capturing the city’s myriad creative sites and communities, the series is a constantly updating guidebook to the complex and evolving cultural geography of New York City.    

Regularly releasing short films throughout the year since 2011, New York Close Up is both a snapshot of a distinct time and place and an ongoing exploration of the what it means to work, live, struggle and succeed in one of the most intensely creative places in the world.  

New York Close Up is made possible with support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and individual contributors.