Maben prepares to film/Poivret
 
The Art on Screen database was produced by the Program for Art on Film, a joint venture of the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1984 to 1994. The program was subsequently incorporated as an independent nonprofit corporation. The organization fostered new ways of thinking about the visual arts and moving-image media, serving as an information resource to support the effective production and use of media on the visual arts.

The database records are available as an Excel spreadsheet and in CSV (comma-separated value) format. Most of the films documented in this database were produced between 1970 and 1998, with selective coverage of productions from 1915 to 1969. Each of the roughly 26,000 citations includes a synopsis, credits, country, language, production date, format, and other filmographic data. The last addition to the database was made in 1998. Media formats covered include film, video, videodisc, multimedia, and CD-ROM productions. The database does not provide information about how to locate copies of the productions or where to view them.

Much of this data has appeared in various print publications, including Films and Videos on Photography (Program for Art on Film, 1991), Art on Screen (G.K. Hall, 1992), and Architecture on Screen (G.K. Hall, 1993). A CD-ROM of the data compiled through 1994 was published by G.K. Hall/Macmillan (1995).

The J. Paul Getty Trust Institutional Archives (a department within Getty Research Institute) acquired the Art on Screen database in 2006 as part of the surviving records of the Program for Art on Film. The administrative records and products of the organization may be studied in the Getty Library; a finding aid is available.

To use Institutional Archives holdings, please contact Library Reference. Researchers who qualify as stack readers may access these holdings in the Special Collections Reading Room. Requests to use Institutional Archive collections should be made at least two weeks in advance. Hours are 9:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Monday–Friday.