Artist Henri Rousseau painted The Dream in 1910, and it's imagery of a woman lounging on a sofa in the jungle was as surreal then as it is today.
The Art Assignment
Corporate lobbies and board rooms are often graced with impressive art, but why?
Why Do Corporations Buy Art?
Artist Maurizio Cattelan duct taped a banana to a wall. Why did it capture our attention, curiosity, and memes? What does it mean?
The $150,000 Banana
Throughout history, art has helped reveal the climate around us and highlight our fragile relationship to it.
How Climate Changes Art
Empathy is a term we hear a lot, but what does it mean and how does it work?
Art and empathy
In 2018, .004% of the US budget went to the National Endowment for the Arts.
Should Art Be Publicly Funded?
There is a huge range of ways that gender has been understood and represented in the history of art.
What does art tell us about gender?
Resistance isn't always visible, but when we can see it in art, what does it look like?
What does resistance look like?
What are we to make of an artist who shreds his work right after selling it?
Behind the Banksy Stunt
Migration is central to human experience.
Art about Migration
Have you heard of Italian Baroque artist Artemisia Gentilschi? Find out why her popularity, and that of other artists, has risen dramatically since the 1970s.
Trending artists
Sometimes art is paintings, and sometimes it's a chair. Why?
The Case for Conceptual Art
You've likely seen this glassy-eyed late 19th Century barmaid before, but what can we make of this painting today?
Better Know: Manet’s Bar
The Met Museum in New York is filled with masterpieces of human creativity, but is there a better way to organize what's inside?
Remake the Met
What's the point of making realistic paintings when photography can do the trick?
The case for Realism
The nude has been celebrated but also censored. What's wrong with seeing the unclothed human body?
The case for nudity
Should art be beautiful? Revisit ancient philosophers' thoughts on beauty and consider why we might be skeptical of beauty today.
Art must be beautiful
Artists don’t just imitate the world around them—they copy each other, reworking old images and revising history.
The Case for Copying
Darkness at noon? There are so many stories of art these days, you’re sure to stay awake in class.
Browse Smarthistory images for teaching & learning!
