How to Interpret the Meaning of an Image
This week, we practice using our skills of visual analysis and learn how to "read" deliberately constructed images.
Feminist Art History: An Introductory Reading List
Beginning with texts written in the 1970s, this reading list shows how the major questions, critiques, and debates developed in the field of feminist art history.
The Evolution of Zaha Hadid, Architect
An unconventional architect who started her career as an outsider, Hadid became a leading figure in architecture and design in the twenty-first century.
Principles of Composition in Art and Design
An artist combines repetition, balance, proportion, movement, and other design elements to form the whole of a visual composition.
Exploring the Avant-Garde Architectural Manifesto
More than a century later, the architectural manifesto continues to hold our attention, emphasizing a charged moment when society was breaking with the past.
Elizabeth Siddal, the Real-Life “Ophelia”
A working-class woman with artistic aspirations of her own, Siddal nearly died of pneumonia after posing for John Everett Millais’s iconic painting.
Victorians Mourned with Vulcanized Rubber Jewelry
Nineteenth-century Anglo-American mourning rituals called for a period of sentimental sadness, but they also demanded an investment in clothing and jewelry.
Art Nouveau: Art of Darkness
First named such in Belgium, Art Nouveau was intimately tied up with that country’s brutal rule of the Congo.
Dressmaking Liberated American Women—Then Came the Men
The creation of bespoke clothing offered women a way to escape traditional middle-class expectations and gain unprecedented power, until men took over.
The Renaissance Lets Its Hair Down
The notion that everybody was going to be hairless in Heaven may not have sat well with Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli.