SandenWolff is the production company that artists and institutions trust to tell their stories. We are the leading creator of videos, documentaries, and podcasts for the art and museum world in New York City and beyond.

SandenWolff was founded in 2012 as a collaboration between arts and culture writer/journalist Rachel Wolff and filmmaker Jonathan Sanden. The concept for the company was to combine Rachel’s expertise and experience as an art writer with Jonathan’s experience in filmmaking. An early focus on the arts enabled us to hone our skills and develop a specialty in serving the unique needs of the art and museum world. Our early clients included the Brooklyn Museum, Public Art Fund, and Swiss Institute. In the years since, SandenWolff's base of clients has grown to include the world’s top museums and institutions, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (since 2021), the Museum of Modern Art (since 2021), the Morgan Library & Museum (since 2019), Neue Galerie New York (since 2018), the Jewish Museum (since 2016), Storm King Art Center (since 2020), and Carnegie Museum of Art (since 2020) among them. Producer/Cinematographer Noah Therrien joined the company in 2015 and is now a Vice President and director/lead producer. New York-based editor Stephen Parnigoni has worked with us since 2014, and Chicago-based editor Hannah Kaylor joined the team full-time in 2022.

With our team’s combined backgrounds in art history, journalism, and feature film, we approach each project from a multi-pronged perspective: narrative and audio-visual storytelling, all with an eye and ear toward crafting authentic and accessible stories. We begin with a rigorous research phase to understand both the specific project and our clients’ broader aims, voice, and aesthetic in order to determine the most evocative stories to tell and the best ways to tell them. From there, we layer in an audio-visual and editorial strategy that balances style and clarity. Our approach is adaptive to each of client’s needs and we work as a small, nimble team that is intimately involved in all stages of a project—from ideation all the way through final deliverables. We also pride ourselves on being adaptive to the scope and scale of a project, be it a one-off short film, a long-form documentary piece, a narrative podcast, or a complex multi-part video series.

The depth of our work with museums and artists has affirmed our long-held belief that the experiences people have with art are transformative and essential. We understand how artists and institutions work, and we understand our role in making their projects, exhibitions, and ideas accessible to as wide an audience as possible. We help enhance and enrich the art-viewing experience and provide viewers with new ways to connect with artists and their work. And apply a similar ethos around access, surprise, dynamism, and delight when non-art-world clients enlist us to tell their stories.

We also know that it’s possible to tell a very full story in a short window of time if it’s well-written, well-planned, and well-executed. We have a unique ability to distill complex stories and concepts into videos, films, and podcasts that are both engaging and informative, while still meeting all of our clients’ and stakeholders’ goals.

Our in-house capabilities extend to all aspects of production and content creation.

In pre-production and production, our services include development and creative direction; writing; producing; interviewing; directing; cinematography; and audio capture and recording. In post-production, we offer full creative picture and sound editorial, including story-editing, musical scoring, sound design, sound mixing, subtitling and title design, color-grading, finishing, and deliverable-creation. We can also adapt all of our deliverables to whatever format, venue, or platform is desired.

We have wide network of trusted collaborators (including photographers, translators, audio specialists, field producers, cinematographers, and support crew in markets around the world) who we enlist as needed. We have extensive experience working with a range of curators, academics, and artists—visual and otherwise.

SandenWolff has offices in Brooklyn and Chicago.