Civilizations

Explore art in the age of revolution, war and profound scientific change.

Travel east and west— to Renaissance Italy and the contemporaneous Islamic empires.

Examine the rise and fall of “progress” as an ideology.

Explore light and color in art in the search for greater realism and spiritual ecstasy.

Explore one of humanity’s deepest artistic urges: the depiction of nature.

See how art became the great interface when distant cultures met for the first time.

Consider how religion has inspired art and art has inspired divine representation.

Explore how we look at the human body in art.

Some of the strongest contemporary art has the magical power of transformation.

Out of Hindu metaphysics comes the nearest visualisation you can get to of a trance.

For artist Ai Weiwei, the calamity of our time is the disaster of the displaced.

In the autumn of 1914, Mondrian had an epiphany that would bring true abstraction.

One of the oldest objects of an imaginary being ever discovered.

Our compulsion to create images of ourselves is a defining artistic motif of humanity.

The cognitive revolution stirred early humanity from its creative slumber.

Edouard Manet created a masterpiece famed as a masterclass in visual subversion.

In December 1942, a Jewish teacher brings art supplies to children held by Nazis.

For Renaissance art theorists, drawing always came before color.

In Islamic architecture, landscapes reflect a mastery over the natural world.

Examine the formative role of art and the creative imagination in forging of humanity.

Examine the formative role of art and the creative imagination in forging of humanity.

This 25,000 year-old sculpture found in France represents the dawn of the idea of beauty.

The riches intended to buy off the Spanish only intensified their lust for gold.

Otto Dix and his generation had borne witness to the horrors of World War I.

Despite his interest in portraiture, Catlin he said the Native Americans must perish.

Thomas Cole regarded the US landscape as being what he called the undefiled work of Gods.

Maria Sibylla's illustrations brought to light the true life cycle of insects.

"Cracked Ice" combines everything Okyo knew from both Eastern and Western traditions.

The Conquistadors attempted to eradicate all traces of indigenous Mexican culture.

Art has found new ways to engage with our spiritual impulses.

A spectacular place where the symbolism of the sacred mountain is embodied in art.

Athenian vase painters recorded and then re-enforced ideas of what wives were meant to do.

Artemisia rebels against any notion that women shouldn't speak until spoken to.

Cave paintings in Castillo Spain represent some of the first paintings made by humans.

A Syrian museum curator sacrificed his life trying to save artifacts in Palmrya.

Albrecht Altdorfer sidesteps religious conflict by using nature.

In Li Cheng's landscape art escapes the natural world.

Ukiyo-e demonstrated that every day transitory objects could be considered art.

In Rome, Caravaggio breaks the social and aesthetic rules of his generation.

The Renaissance creates a contrast between ars and invenio.

Mimar Sinar always felt destined for something greater than building bridges.

Goya bares witness to the irrational forces unleashed by Napoleon's invasion of Spain.