Josep Lluis Sert: Architect to the Arts will complete an unfinished project begun in 1966. Incorporating multi-formatted material (16mm and Polavision film, 1/4" magnetic tape, stills, and writing) gathered in the 1960s and '70s, the project will preserve rare-motion picture encounters with Sert, and from that footage build works for public exhibition and access. These include a DVD, comprised of a short documentary called Two Catalans; outtakes from that film which are of historical, aesthetic, or cultural interest; film vignettes from Sert's time in Cambridge (shot on Polavision); contemporaneous journal entries and photographs made during Robert Gardner's time with Sert in Spain; and audio recordings in which Sert recalls his career and artistic development.

Robert Gardner began his career as a filmmaker in the mid-1950s. His first feature-length work Dead Birds, an account of a Stone Age–community living in New Guinea, was released in 1964 and added to the Library of Congress's National Register of Films in 1998. In addition to his ethnographic features, Gardner has made several shorter films, including documentaries on artists Alexander Calder, Joan Miró, and Sean Scully.  He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; founding director of Harvard Film Study Center (1957–97); former director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts; and faculty member in the Department of Anthropology and Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University (1960–2000). He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Anthropological Association in 2005.