For nearly 3,000 years a series of kingdoms flourished in ancient Nubia (present-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan). The region was rich in sought-after resources such as gold and ivory and its ...

Assyrian kings in the ninth to seventh centuries BC decorated their palaces with masterful relief sculptures that represent a high point of Mesopotamian art, both for their artistic quality and ...

Blue paper has been a popular artist material since the fifteenth century. Crafted from blue rags formed into sheets, this humble material that required expert knowledge to produce and had a profound ...

Ancient Iran, historically known as Persia, was the dominant nation of western Asia for over a millennium (about 550 BC–AD 650), with three native dynasties controlling an empire of unprecedented size ...

The Chimaera of Arezzo (detail), Etruscan, about 400 B.C. Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Toscana—Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Firenze. Photo by Ferdinando Guerrini The Chimaera of ...

In a peripatetic career that spanned five decades, the photographer Felice Beato (1832–1909) covered a wide swath of East Asia. Following in the wake of Britain's vast colonial empire, he was among ...

Medieval scribes and artists were some of the world’s first graphic designers. They planned individual pages and entire books in creative ways, using handwritten text and painted decoration. From ...

The Virgin Mary is one of the most important figures in the Christian tradition. This exhibition presents illuminated manuscripts depicting myriad stories and images from the Middle Ages that ...

Vassily Kandinsky believed primary shapes corresponded with specific primary colors. He devised a survey to test the theory among his students. See if your answers align with the Bauhaus master’s.

Violence was considered a necessary part of life in the Middle Ages (about 500–1500 A.D.). People were surrounded by violence in many forms, including wars, brutal tournaments, and deadly rivalries ...

The 16 th-century German artist Hans Holbein the Younger created portraits for a wide range of patrons, including scholars, statesmen, and courtiers, in Switzerland and England. Holbein’s drawings and ...