Art History Resource Guide

This program tracks the cultural evolution of art-from the ancient Greeks to the modern world, where art is big business

This program documents an expanded presentation that enables viewers to study and appreciate the museum's vast inventory. The result is a highly effective visual aid for instruction in archaeology, Egyptian history, art history, and other disciplines.

This program spotlights 33 works of Chinese art seldom ever seen outside of the National Palace Museum.

This program considers the debt Western civilization owes to paganism, Christianity, and Islam, showing how each religion has influenced the other and how the art of all three continues to exert an effect on the world. Highlighting the lifelike sculptures of ancient Greece that celebrate what it is to be human; the primitive daubs in Roman catacombs, shimmering Byzantine mosaics, and Renaissance crucifixion scenes; and the dazzling arabesques of Egyptian, Turkish, and Spanish mosques, Matthew Collings points out the common humanity underlying three significantly different worldviews.

Industrialization in the 19th century, and the widespread human exploitation and personal alienation that characterized it, produced a crisis of faith and shook people's confidence in the very concept of civilization. In this program, Matthew Collings follows in the footsteps of John Ruskin, a social critic who interpreted the ills of his era and believed that art could salve, and perhaps even save, the soul. J. M. W. Turner, William Morris, and the Pre-Raphaelites are spotlighted, along with locales particularly significant to Ruskin-the Alps, Venice, his beloved Lake District, and the blasted landscape of over-industrialized northern Britain.

This program focuses on Berlin, where Hannah Hoch, George Grosz, and John Heartfield politicized the anarchist Dada movement, uniting it with the extreme Left. Nearby, the newly formed Bauhaus School, led by founder Walter Gropius and other influential architects and artists, encouraged students to reject history and embrace new techniques, materials, and styles.

Featuring the work of legendary painters Frida Kahlo and Maria Izquierdo-as well as living artists Fanny Sanin, Soledad Salame, Elba Damast, and many others-the program reevaluates notions of mainstream and margin in the contemporary art world.