Time travel using art with the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: essays, art images and objects, and chronologies that use the Met’s fabulous collection to delve into the contexts that made the art possible. For example, the featured image is “Bowl with Human Feet” and it is thousands of years old.
Period: Predynastic, Late Naqada l–Naqada II
Date: ca. 3900–3650 B.C.
Geography: From Egypt
Medium: Polished red pottery
Dimensions: diam. 13.2 x W. 13.7 x D. 9.8 cm (5 3/16 x 5 3/8 x 3 7/8 in.)
Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1910
Accession Number: 10.176.113
The timelines have annotated entries that give more information about the society that produced the art. (There are also links to publications and slideshows from the Met that feature the image or object.) More generally, the essays cover topics as diverse as African Lost-Wax Casting through Great Plains Indians Musical Instruments to the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368).
How would your students explain today’s artworks?
