„Wo die Kunst aus dem Rahmen fällt: Museum Hours” (Dominik Kamalzadeh, DER STANDARD) >>

„Museum Hours. Ein Film wie ein gemütlicher Museumsspaziergang” (KLEINE ZEITUNG) >>

„Museum Hours: Wo ist das Klo im Kunsthistorischen?” (Christoph Huber, DIE PRESSE) >>

„Museum Hours. Kurzweiliger dokumentarischer Spielfilm über die Herausforderung, im Leben und in der Kunst genau hinzusehen” (Günter Pscheider, RAY) >>

„With practice, savvy festivalgoers learn how to strike a balance between high-profile selections and those that have little publicity and marketing muscle. Yet it's hard not to wish that the festival did more to push under-the-radar titles like Jem Cohen's MUSEUM HOURS into the foreground. A delicate, quiet, sometimes gravely moving symphony of Vienna, the movie traces two strangers – an American visitor and an Austrian museum guard – who become acquaintances over many conversations and through long, lonely walks captured by this filmmaker's gimlet eye. MUSEUM HOURS is sure to show up again either in other festivals or independent theaters.” (NEW YORK TIMES)

„... Jem Cohen's MUSEUM HOURS which takes place in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Art Museum and engages in long, lovely takes of paintings by Brueghel, Rembrandt and others. With its picturesque reframing of what we consider art, and its re-contextualizing of time-honored masterpieces, MUSEUM HOURS accomplished what every film – and film festival – should: Send audiences out of their cinematic bubble with fresh eyes and invigorated ways of seeing the world around them.” (WASHINGTON POST)

„At once intimate and expansive ... Cohen's overall strategy is deeply satisfying. He's got a marvelous eye for detail, not just in artwork but in the world around him ... bringing out what's notable in the everyday and ignored.” (Jay Weissberg, VARIETY)

„Full of charm, intelligence and dry humour, it deserves to find a discerning theatrical audience beyond Cohen's usual festival- circuit following. At the heart of the film is an absorbing argument that dusty old artworks have plenty to tell us about contemporary life – especially about money, politics, power, social class and sex ... Cerebral stuff, but all delivered with warmth, wit and quiet confidence.” (Stephen Dalton, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER)

„Lovely, powerful ... Cohen's discursive approach veers in and out of reality with a seamless rhythm. With a keen eye for the capacity of fine art to address a complex range of attitudes and experiences, MUSEUM HOURS effectively applies Cohen's existing strengths to a familiar scenario and rejuvenates it by delivering a powerfully contemplative look at the transformative ability of all art. On the one hand a sad, poignant character study, MUSEUM HOURS is also a treatise on art history and a love letter to architectural wonders.” (Eric Kohn, INDIEWIRE)

„Life! Love! Art! MUSEUM HOURS is about all that and more. Perceptive, full of humor and kind-
ness. A film that makes you want to go out and walk, walk, walk, guided by the unspoken ‘Wahlverwandtschaft’ of two strangers; transcending the conventional moralities of time and space and unearthing the shattered structures that hold together history, politics, memory and their unseen connections.” (Dana Linssen, DE FILMKRANT)

„The festival's most impressive American narrative film–matches an incisive disquisition on art and politics with an exquisite character-study. Almost effortlessly, Cohen weaves together the film's many conceptual threads: the narrative of a growing friendship between two solitary middle-aged people, carefully rendered by two non-professional actors, songwriter Mary Margaret O'Hara and Bobby Sommer; gray-hued fragments of a city symphony and love-letter to the neglected richness of detail in everyday life; and an intelligent disquisition on art, its historical relationship to class, and its role, in the hands of Flemish Renassiance painter Pieter Bruegel, as a kind of precursor to documentary realism.” (Leo Goldsmith, MUBI, Locarno Film Fest Report)

„MUSEUM HOURS is a film about seeing, and a tribute to how art sharpens our perception of the world around us ... The greatest strength of MUSEUM HOURS is how Cohen is able to integrate the act of looking at paintings, sometimes into the narrative and sometimes through digressions, reminding us of the importance of really looking. An ode to museums, a discourse on visual literacy and a heartfelt story of two strangers finding each other.” (Adam Cook, CINEMA SCOPE)