For students of the humanities…
For some people (including me), the Paris's Louvre is pretty much THE museum. It singlehandedly holds the Mona Lisa, the Nike of Samothrace, the Venus de Milo, the Raft of the Medusa, and many other wondrous artifacts. Every time Paris floods, I worry about this place; but they saved their treasures from World War II,… Continue reading Website: The Louvre (English Version)
Smarthistory has a number of excellent articles and videos about the history of art. No matter what you are researching, this is a great site to check as their information deals with diverse cultures and time periods. For example, at the time I'm posting this, the first two topics on their landing page deal with… Continue reading Website: Smarthistory: The Center for Public Art History
If you are looking for a specific work of art, and you're not sure what museum holds it, Google Arts and Culture is a good place to start. They have high resolution images (that can be zoomed in) of more than 2000 works. In addition, they have information on those works, as well as articles… Continue reading Website: Google Arts and Culture
The British Museum has an absolutely amazing collection. When looking at any large museum, it can be a little overwhelming. A good first step when using any museum's site for research is to find the option to search their collections. You can search by specific names (if you are looking for a specific work) or… Continue reading Website: The British Museum: Collections Search
Are you interested in Stonehenge? If so, then I highly recommend this detailed article from the British Museum's blog. They provide a great deal of interesting information and a number of amazing visuals. I appreciate that this article goes over the history, in addition to talking about how it's put together. link to Introduction to… Continue reading Article: Introduction to Stonehenge
This site has so much information, it can become a little overwhelming. In the future, I plan to highlight a few specific areas, but I didn't want to wait to share information about this resource in general. The Kahn Academy provides free courses (including some excellent videos) on a wide variety of subjects. If you're… Continue reading Website: Kahn Academy
The World History Encyclopedia purports to be the "world's most-read history encyclopedia." I don't know about that, but they have a huge number of articles about a wide variety of topics on history, culture, and art. They have been very helpful to me when researching new topics, and they are easy to search. link to… Continue reading Website: The World History Encyclopedia
Understanding what people wear can help us understand them and their culture. The history of fashion is a fascinating part of cultural history. If you're interested in checking out fashion, a good place to start is with videos put together by historical reenactors. One such set of videos is priorattire's Dressing Up Series on YouTube.… Continue reading Videos: Dressing Up Series on YouTube
This site provides articles on a truly amazing variety of topics. For example, their current front page has articles about the Pendle Witches, new Denisovan Fossils, Horseback Archery Revival, and a Theory of Atlantis—just to name a few. This is an excellent site to help you get started with your research (historically older topics are… Continue reading Website: Ancient Origins: Reconstructing the Story of Humanity’s Past
My last post talked about PBS's Crash Course. Even though they don't have a dedicated art series (as of this writing), they do occasional art episodes within some of their other series. This video is one of those, and it's on the Harlem Renaissance. This is a diverse and exciting artistic period, and I'm glad… Continue reading Video: Arts and Letters of the Harlem Renaissance: Crash Course Black American History #26
If you've never heard of PBS's Crash Course series, you should definitely check them out. Ranging in topics from mathematics to science to history to philosophy, they offer fun and engaging looks at complicated topics. They don't have an art series (as of this writing), but students of the Humanities can find a lot of… Continue reading Videos: Crash Course
This site provides a great variety of information about the life and culture of Elizabethan England (my favorite part is their section on Sumptuary Laws mandated who could wear what). Much of their information comes from original sources--documents from Elizabethan England that they have (in many cases) transcribed onto their site. They also have a… Continue reading Website: Renaissance: The Elizabethan World
MOMA (The Museum of Modern Art in New York) contains some of the best examples of Modern and Post-Modern art in the world. This art can be very different than the art that most of us are used to, and MOMA has put together a great many excellent videos that showcase various aspects of Modern,… Continue reading Videos: MOMA’s YouTube Channel
The Victoria and Albert Museum has a great many excellent online resources, and their collections are very easy to search. I highly suggest their site if you have a project that requires you to look for art by type. For example, they have links to architecture resources, books, furniture, glass, print, and many, many other… Continue reading Website: The Victoria and Albert Museum
For those who like poetry, Medieval literature, or just need to research obscure literature, this site may prove valuable. It purports to hold translations of 79% of the surviving Old English Poetry. That's pretty impressive. Reading these works can give you an idea of what people in England during the Early Middle Ages were talking… Continue reading Website: Old English Poetry Project
