The New York Times by Manohla Dargis

Like most of Mr. Wiseman’s work, the movie is at once specific and general, fascinating in its pinpoint detail and transporting in its cosmic reach.

The Telegraph by Tim Robey

It’s beautifully organised, and there’s no way you could possibly watch it without learning all kinds of stuff.

Time Out by Keith Uhlich

The popular view of art is that it belongs to the masses. Wiseman casts a more skeptical eye, questioning such egalitarianism with cold, hard historical context. Yet he simultaneously acknowledges that these works live on far beyond their original purpose, even if, as the film’s bold, brilliant climax suggests, they may eventually play to an audience of none.

RogerEbert.com by Glenn Kenny

Like the Maysles brothers, like Shirley Clarke, like D.A. Pennebaker at his heights, Wiseman has created a body of work that proves him a great filmmaker, period. His latest picture, National Gallery, is a typically lucid, graceful and unobtrusively multi-tiered work.

Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern

National Gallery isn’t just about a museum full of famous pictures. It’s about the nature of art, and art’s acolytes; about the mystery of what may lie beneath a particular painting’s visible surface; about the business of art at a time when money can be scarce and attention spans can be short.

Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer

Frederick Wiseman’s documentary National Gallery is for art lovers, movie lovers – basically for anybody. Ostensibly a film about London’s famous museum, it’s really about the experience of art in all its manifestations.

Entertainment Weekly by Joe McGovern

The knowledge that Rembrandt recycled his own paintings doesn't minimize the scene in Frederick Wiseman's documentary where we see an X-ray of one of the Dutch master's portraits — and go, ''Wow!''

Little White Lies by Mark Asch

Wiseman shows us the “how” of art appreciation, from politics to philosophy, in a film vast in scope, and richly suggestive in insight.

Village Voice by Nick Schager

Like so much of his celebrated work, documentarian Frederick Wiseman's National Gallery is long, leisurely paced, wide-ranging, meticulously crafted, intellectually intricate, and touched with profundity.

Los Angeles Times by Betsy Sharkey

In a time when so many documentary filmmakers take on advocacy roles, National Gallery represents the heart of what Wiseman does best — step back and let the place and its people lead the story.

Slant Magazine by James Lattimer

In the style of an ambling, yet entirely focused visitor, the film continually circles back to pictures, protagonists, and situations to furnish them with new meanings, alter their perception, or even directly challenge their previous presentation.

The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo

Unlike Wiseman’s greatest films, National Gallery never quite finds an overarching theme. There’s a fair amount of material regarding the art/commerce divide, but many scenes have no bearing whatsoever on that subject, and the film generally lacks urgency.

The Playlist by Oliver Lyttelton

Wiseman's film is the most nourishing example of cinematic brain food you'll have all year.

The Dissolve by David Ehrlich

The ultimate value of the famed filmmaker’s latest documentary—a subject National Gallery turns into a reflexive concern—is not that Wiseman makes it possible for a broader audience to see these priceless works of art, but that the scope of his project invites all audiences to look at them through an illuminating new lens.

Variety by Jay Weissberg

The effect of National Gallery is to reinforce the notion that paintings are objects to know and understand.

CineVue by Ed Frankl

In his signature style, without talking heads, narration or explanatory context, Wiseman takes us straight into the London gallery itself and the inhabitants inside - both human and paint-form.

The Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer

National Gallery feels closer to a pure aesthetic investigation than an organizational exposé, and in that respect is reminiscent of recent Paris-set films like Crazy Horse or La Danse, mostly allowing the art to speak for itself.