A postcard illustrating a California Anomaly, Snow and Oranges, Pasadena, California, No. 7782

How to Find and Choose the Best Images for Your Project

To spot high-quality images, you'll need to draw on your basic visual literacy skills.
São Paulo Museum of Art

Lina Bo Bardi: Architect of Brazilian Modernism

A community-oriented architect, Lina Bo Bardi embraced the principles of modernism to design public buildings that remained connected to Brazil’s past.
Rene Magritte with 'Femme-Bouteille', his oil painting of a nude on a glass bottle, circa 1955

How René Magritte Became the Grudging Father of Pop Art

Though he dismissed Pop as “window dressing, advertising art,” many critics and artists of the 1960s claimed Magritte as the movement's greatest forebearer.

Country Roads and City Scenes in Japanese Woodblock Prints

Explore two centuries of printmaking—from Hokusai and Hiroshige through Hiratsuka—in this online collection shared by Boston College.
Dummy boards, British or Dutch, circa 1690

Dummy Boards: the Fun Figures of the 1600s

These life-sized painted figures, popular in Europe and colonial America in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, were designed to amuse and confuse.
Saint John the Baptist in Prison Visited by Salome by Guercino

Taking Liberties With Biblical Stories

In the Christian New Testament, Saint John the Baptist and Salome never meet. Why, then, does she appear at the bars of his cell in Guercino’s moody painting?

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.
Lee Krasner: Living Colour exhibition at Barbican Art Gallery on May 29, 2019 in London, England.

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.
Zaha Hadid, 2013

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.