In 'National Gallery,' filmmaker Frederick Wiseman turns the camera on art

Acclaimed documentarian Frederick Wiseman has tackled a wide variety of subjects, from a hospital for the criminally insane, a portrait of U.S. Army basic training and the juvenile justice system to the Comedie Francais in Paris.

But for his latest film, Wiseman decided to focus on a monumental institution: the National Gallery in London, home to 2,400 of the world's finest paintings.

Anyone who doubts whether Wiseman chose a worthy subject need only look at the trailer for "National Gallery," which mentions the famed artists whose paintings grace its walls: Valazquez, Pissarro, Rubens, Picasso, Holbein, Stubbs, Bellini, Leonardo, Titian, Turner, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Poussin, Vermeer and Leonardo da Vinci.

"National Gallery" will screen Friday through Sunday at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. The filmmaker's rationale for making it is surprisingly simple.

"It's one of the great galleries of the world," he said. "And they gave me permission."

Wiseman spent 12 weeks wandering everywhere around the gallery, taking his camera into offices and workshops, and around the outside of the building. In some 170 hours of footage, he captured the art and the people who surround it.

Along the way, the filmmaker, who has been making films since the 1960s, made a surprising discovery.

"I found myself looking more carefully," he said. Wiseman, who is now in his mid-80s, has spent a lifetime looking carefully at his film. At the National Gallery he learned to appreciate great art.

"One of the things that I hope that I learned as a result of making the film was how to look at and read a painting," he said.

Doing so takes more than just understanding form and the color. There is also historical context. In one sequence in the film, a guide stands before an ornate medieval altar screen, covered with images from the Bible. She challenges a group of visitors to see it differently.

"So, we are in the National Gallery, having a look, quite quietly," she says. "But what we must remember is, how was this originally intended to be seen?"

The piece would have been originally displayed in a church during a time when the vast majority of people seeing it couldn't read.

Flickering candles could have made the pictures appear to move. To many of that era, the altar screen would have been an incomprehensible wonder inspired by God.

"Unless we know something about life at that time," Wiseman said, "We don't have the significance of the context of the painting."

Much of "National Gallery" is about seeing: how an artist sees a subject, how a visitor sees a painting -- or how a filmmaker envisions people seeing art.

There is a whole section on art restoration where Wiseman found modern practice involves repairing damage in such a way that any repairs themselves can be easily removed. It's a tacit acknowledgement that each succeeding generation sees art differently, and does restorations in a different way.

The finished film runs three hours, but Wiseman weaves together the material so expertly it never drags.

The filmmaker will be spending a lot of time in Minneapolis in the next couple of years, not to make a film, but a dance. A ballet fan, he has long been bothered by once facet of it.

"So much of contemporary ballet, or at least contemporary ballet I have seen has nothing to do with modern life," he said. "It has to do with life in the 19th Century, or the 18th Century."

Over the next two years the Minneapolis based James Sewell Ballet will adapt Wiseman's documentary "The Titicut Follies." Wiseman will be on hand to advise the stage production, which will be based on his 1967 film about a mental hospital. James Sewell will arrange the choreography.

"The idea is the ballet will its world premiere in two years in the fall of 2016," he said. "It's not yet settled yet whether the premiere will be in Minneapolis or in New York , but it certainly going to play in both places."