Although the style implies a rapid or even slipshod painting process, Open Window, Collioure was carefully orchestrated in every aspect.
Location City: Washington D.C.
Though at first glance this nude seems plucked from classical antiquity, it actually alludes to modern politics.
Hiram Powers, The Greek Slave
The painting that inspired a National Park
Thomas Moran, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
Was the 10th century Chola queen, Sembiyan Mahadevi, so beloved, she was depicted as a goddess?
Queen or goddess?
Alexander, the Mongols, and the great epic of Iran.
Folio from a Shahnama, The Bier of ...
The angry ducks of Bada Shanren.
Bada Shanren, Lotus and Ducks
A red so rare, so impossible to make, the process was lost before the end of the Ming Dynasty.
A Ritual Ming dish
A fisherman and a woodcutter — at age 90, the great Japanese artist Hokusai painted these moving images of contentment.
Beyond the Great Wave — Hokusai at ...
Superman makes an appearance in what looks (at first sight) like a Japanese print.
Superman, World War II, and Japanese-American experience
Cats, gossip, and laundry — a view of Los Angeles during the Great Depression.
Millard Sheets, Tenement Flats
Thinking about our history in a different way helps us rethink our present.
What’s in a map? Jaune Quick-To-See Smith’s ...
Daniel Boone, Moses, and the western frontier: creating an American mythology
Envisioning Manifest Destiny
The “father of video art” argued that electronic communication, not transportation, unites the modern world.
Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., ...
The artist transforms metal from alcohol bottles into textiles that represent libations for ancestors.
El Anatsui, Untitled
Frankenthaler doesn’t paint the landscape per se, but offers an intuitive response to Cape Breton in Nova Scotia.
Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea
Sartre described Giacometti’s figures as “halfway between nothingness and being,” but “very skinny” works too.
Alberto Giacometti, Walking Man II
Who’s that in the plumed hat? From emperors to kings, the painter Bichitr mastered court portraiture.
Bichitr, Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to ...
This outfit was likely made for a British lieutenant and gifted to him in a ritual exchange to show mutual respect.
Global trade and an 18th-century Anishinaabe outfit
Found marking the grave of an important individual, this gorget was worn as a neck ornament during life.
Mississippian shell neck ornament (gorget)
Nampeyo found inspiration from the old to create a pottery style that was entirely new and highly sought after.