Remarkable for its lifelike detail, this plaque depicts a fledgling quail, better known to literate Egyptians as the hieroglyph for the sound w. Plaques like this one that show animals, deities, and ...

The Art Institute’s extensive Applied Arts of Europe collection of 8,500 objects includes furniture, ceramics, metalwork, glass, and wallpaper dating from 1100 to 1945. There is particular strength in ...

A windblown girl looks out toward the viewer, shielding her eyes from the blinding sun with one hand while holding on to her younger sister with the other. Spanish artist Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida was ...

Chicago artist Ivan Albright executed this grisly work for the 1945 movie adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. In Wilde’s tale, a portrait of the young and attractive ...

Laced with dry wit and humor, the Sweepers Clock is arguably the most labor-intensive of Dutch designer Maarten Baas’s 2009 series of timepieces. As the name suggests, the clock features two people ...

Byzantine glassmakers refined the techniques they inherited from their Roman predecessors, creating objects with increasingly elaborate forms and complex decorative elements to flaunt their skills.

In The Solemn Pledge, Walter Ufer portrayed three generations of Native Americans, combining a bright, saturated palette with sensitively modeled figures. The white robes worn by the boy and two of ...

For over thirty years, Bill Viola has created single-channel videos as well as sound and video installations that focus on spirituality and explore multiple levels of human consciousness. In ...

Beginning in 1917, Henri Matisse spent most winters in Nice, on the Mediterranean coast. He often stayed at the Hôtel Mediterranée, a Rococo-style building he later fondly termed “faked, absurd, ...

This fragment is part of a scene of donkeys being driven over grain to separate wheat from chaff- one that was used in many Egyptian tombs. The tomb’s owner selected the decoration for his or her tomb ...

This scene is imbued with a sense of quiet and stillness, broken only by the lone female bather pulling herself out of the water by a branch. Although the setting is a real hillside lake he visited in ...

A University Partner Program membership encourages students to learn beyond the classroom at one of the world’s greatest cultural institutions. Your college or university is invited to join this ...