Episode 1 premieres October 17, 2025.

Peabody Award-winning series Art in the Twenty-First Century returns for Season 12 on PBS, offering three new one-hour episodes. The biennial series is the only program on television in the U.S. to focus exclusively on contemporary visual art and artists. Viewers observe the artists at work, watch as they transform inspiration into art, and hear how they struggle with both the physical and visual challenges of achieving their visions. This landmark season builds upon a quarter century of shaping how audiences experience art and artists today.

Continuing to expand storytelling, Season 12 takes a global approach by focusing on backgrounds, regions, and stories new to Art21. The season weaves together the stories of artists exploring the human experience, our environmental impact, colonial and imperial histories, the power of fantasy and fiction, and the art that exists around us each day.

“Between Worlds,” directed by Bryan Chang and the Meerkat Media Collective production team
The first episode of Season 12 follows artists Sophie Calle, Lubaina Himid, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, and Dyani White Hawk as they navigate the spaces in between, creating works that exist between cultures, storylines, migrations, and cosmologies. The film travels between the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Buras, home of a Vietnamese fishing community in Louisiana; the century-old Southwestern Association for Indian Arts Santa Fe Indian Market; and the Musée Picasso in Paris.

“Realms of the Real,” directed by Stephanie Wang-Breal
The second episode shows how artists Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Ragnar Kjartansson, Candice Lin, and Tomás Saraceno push everyday materials and historical truths into the fantastical, absurd, and sublime. Sites featured include Europe’s oldest banana plantation outside Reykjavik, Iceland and the former Agfa photographic film and dye factory in Berlin.

“Human Nature,” directed by Art21 senior producer Ian Forster
The third and final episode of Season 12 spotlights how artists Lenka Clayton, Josh Kline, Delcy Morelos, and Sin Wai Kin explore what it means to be human, looking at our collective responsibilities, our influence on the built and natural environment, and our ways of being. Scenes move from the former Monastery of Santa María de las Cuevas, now an arts center in Seville, Spain; the countryside outside of Bogotá, Colombia; and the Troy Hill neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.