 | |
| Type | Non-profit organization |
|---|---|
| Industry | Education |
| Founded | 2005 |
| Headquarters | New York City |
Key people |
|
| Services | Videos and essays on art and cultural history |
| Website | smarthistory |
Smarthistory is a free resource for the study of art history created by art historians Beth Harris and Steven Zucker. Smarthistory is an independent not-for-profit organization and the official partner of the Khan Academy for art history. [1] [2] It is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. [3]
Smarthistory started in 2005 [4] as an audio guide series for use at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, [5] The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, [6] and as a resource for students taking introductory art history courses at the college level. [7] In addition to its focus on college-level courses in art history, Smarthistory supports the art history Advanced Placement course and examination developed by The College Board. [8] Smarthistory provides essays, videos, photographs, and links to additional resources for all of the art and architecture that make up the AP art history curriculum. [9] [10]
Smarthistory has published more than 880 videos and 2,000 essays on art and cultural history from the Paleolithic era to the 21st century that include the art of Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. [11] [12] Smarthistory's essays have been contributed by more than 200 art historians, curators, and archaeologists writing in their areas of focus and are peer-reviewed. [13] [11] Videos are unscripted conversations between experts recorded on location in front of the original work of art or architecture. [14] [15]
| External video | |
|---|---|
 | |
 Arch of Constantine, a typical Smarthistory video |
In an article in the Brooklyn New York Daily News, staff writer Elizabeth Lazarowitz quotes Steven Zucker, "Art can be really intimidating for people", said Zucker. "If we can make art feel exciting and interesting and very much relevant to a historical moment...art can have real meaning." Unlike reading about art in a book, "the idea of the audio was to keep a student's eyes on the image", he explained. "It helped students to learn the material a lot better." [16]
Smarthistory won the Webby Award for Education in 2009. [17] The Samuel H. Kress Foundation gave them a $25,000 grant for development in 2008 and a $38,000 partnership development grant with the Portland Art Museum in 2009. [18]
Advanced Placement (AP) is a program in the United States and Canada created by the College Board. AP offers undergraduate university-level curricula and examinations to high school students. Colleges and universities in the US and elsewhere may grant placement and course credit to students who obtain qualifying scores on the examinations. The AP curriculum for each of the various subjects is created for the College Board by a panel of experts and college-level educators in that academic discipline. For a high school course to have the designation, the course must be audited by the College Board to ascertain that it satisfies the AP curriculum as specified in the Board's Course and Examination Description (CED). If the course is approved, the school may use the AP designation and the course will be publicly listed on the AP Course Ledger.
Mary Ellen Miller is an American art historian and academician specializing in Mesoamerica and the Maya.
The Academy for Mathematics, Science, and Engineering (AMSE) is a four-year magnet public high school program intended to prepare students for STEM careers. Housed on the campus of Morris Hills High School in Rockaway, New Jersey, United States, it is a joint endeavor between the Morris County Vocational School District and the Morris Hills Regional District.
The Chimera of Arezzo is regarded as the best example of ancient Etruscan art. The British art historian David Ekserdjian described the sculpture as "one of the most arresting of all animal sculptures and the supreme masterpiece of Etruscan bronze-casting". Made entirely of bronze and measuring 78.5 cm high with a length of 129 cm, it was found alongside a small collection of other bronze statues in Arezzo, an ancient Etruscan and Roman city in Tuscany. The statue was originally part of a larger sculptural group representing a fight between a Chimera and the Greek hero Bellerophon. This sculpture is likely to have been created as a votive offering to the Etruscan god Tinia.
Advanced Placement (AP) Art History is an Advanced Placement art history course and exam offered by the College Board.
Oleg Grabar was a French-born art historian and archeologist, who spent most of his career in the United States, as a leading figure in the field of Islamic art and architecture in the Western academe.
Place de la Concorde or Viscount Lepic and his Daughters Crossing the Place de la Concorde is an 1879 oil painting by Edgar Degas. It depicts the cigar-smoking Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic, his daughters, his dog, and a solitary man on the left at Place de la Concorde in Paris. The Tuileries Gardens can be seen in the background, behind a stone wall.
Tiffany Shlain is an American filmmaker, artist, and author. Described by the public radio program On Being as "an internet pioneer", Shlain is the co-founder of the Webby Awards and the founder of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.
Svetlana Leontief Alpers is an American art historian, also a professor, writer and critic. Her specialty is Dutch Golden Age painting, a field she revolutionized with her 1984 book The Art of Describing. She has also written on Tiepolo, Rubens, Bruegel, and Velázquez, among others.
Khan Academy is an American non-profit educational organization created in 2006 by Sal Khan. Its goal is creating a set of online tools that help educate students. The organization produces short lessons in the form of videos. Its website also includes supplementary practice exercises and materials for educators. It has produced over 8,000 video lessons teaching a wide spectrum of academic subjects, including mathematics, sciences, literature, US history, and computer science. All resources are available for free to users of the website and application.
Claus or Claux de Werve was a sculptor active at the Burgundian court under Philip the Bold between 1395 and 1439. He was probably born in the Dutch city of Haarlem around 1380.
Refinery29 (R29) is an American multinational digital media and entertainment website focused on young women. It is owned by Vice Media.
Death and Life is an oil-on-canvas painting by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt. The painting was started in 1908 and completed in 1915. It idepicts an allegorical subject in an Art Nouveau (Modern) style. The painting measures 178 by 198 centimeters and is now housed at the Leopold Museum in Vienna.
The Grands Boulevards is an oil on canvas painting, which was painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 1875. The painting illustrates a busy Paris boulevard showing the effects of industrialisation and Haussmannisation. The image is housed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It is considered to be Renoir's most famous view of Paris.
The bushel with ibex motifs, also known as the beaker with ibex motifs, is a prehistoric pottery artifact originating from Susa, an ancient city in the Near East located in modern-day Iran. This piece of art is believed to have been created during the Susa I period, between 4200 and 3500 BCE. The bushel is a large vessel, measuring 28.90 x 16.40 cm, and was used as a funerary item among the first inhabitants of Susa.
Renata Holod is an American art historian, architecture historian and archaeologist, specializing in the Islamic world. She is the College for Women Class of 1963 Term Professor in the Humanities in the History of Art Department, and Curator of the Near East Section, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Holod has taught at University of Penn since 1972, and was a visiting Clark Professor at Williams College in 2002. She has conducted and/or directed archaeological fieldwork in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Morocco, Turkey, Ukraine, and Tunisia.
Carol Armstrong is an American professor, art historian, art critic, and photographer. Armstrong teaches and writes about 19th-century French art, the history of photography, the history and practice of art criticism, feminist theory and women and gender representation in visual culture.
David James Clarke is honorary professor of modern and contemporary art history at the University of Hong Kong where he taught from 1986 to 2017. He was born in Somerset, England, earned his PhD in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, in 1983. As an art historian he specialises in the art of Europe, North America and China from the eighteenth century to the present day. He is also active as a visual artist, particularly as a photographer.
Gülru Necipoğlu is a Turkish American professor of Islamic Art/Architecture. She has been the Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University since 1993, where she started teaching as Assistant Professor in 1987. She received her Harvard Ph.D. in the Department of History of Art and Architecture (1986), her BA in Art History at Wesleyan, her high school degree in Robert College, Istanbul (1975). She is married to the Ottoman historian and Harvard University professor Cemal Kafadar. Her sister is the historian Nevra Necipoğlu.
The popular American video sharing platform YouTube has become widely used in educational settings.