Asia
Asia
Basics to get you started
A brief history of the cultures of Asia
Ancient West Asia: cradle of civilization
Trade in East Asia
Cultural diversity in East Asia
Ceramic innovation in East Asia
A brief history of the art of South Asia: prehistory–c. 500 C.E.
Geographic regions of South Asia
Beliefs made visible: Hindu art in South Asia
Beliefs made visible: Buddhist art in South Asia
Understanding divine “blueness” in South Asia
The historical Buddha
How to recognize the Buddha
Four Buddhas at the American Museum of Natural History
Images of enlightenment: aniconic vs. iconic depictions of the Buddha in India
Exploring color in Mughal paintings
The making and worship of Ganesha statues in Maharashtra
Submerged, burned, and scattered: celebrating the destruction of objects in South Asia
Painting in Mithila, an introduction
Recording and representing India: the East India Company’s landscape practices
Sultanate art and architecture, an introduction
Indian artists and the British East India Company
Gandharan sculpture
Imperial splendor: textiles and royal life
Expressions and experimentations: textiles in visual art
Freedom Movement: textile practices and the making of a nation
From handmade to factory made: industry, trade and handcrafted traditions
Containers of confluence: imagery on painted and printed textiles
Warding off the evil eye: talismanic textiles
Secrets of the trade: inherited traditions
Dress and diversity: costumes traditions of the Indian subcontinent
Mastering color: natural dyes of the Indian subcontinent
Motifs and patterns: fundamentals of design vocabulary
Chinese jade, an introduction
Chinese porcelain: production and export
Chinese porcelain: decoration
Chinese landscape painting
Lang Jingshan and early Chinese photography
Chinese calligraphy, an introduction
Mountings of Chinese paintings: scrolls, fans, and leafs
Chinese scholar-painters, an introduction
Art in the Mao era and Cultural Revolution, an introduction
Japanese art: the formats of two-dimensional works
Jōmon period, an introduction
Jōmon pottery
Yayoi period, an introduction
Kofun period, an introduction
Asuka period, an introduction
Nara period, an introduction
Heian period, an introduction
Kamakura period, an introduction
Nanbokuchō and Muromachi periods, an introduction
Azuchi-Momoyama period, an introduction
Edo period, an introduction
Meiji period, an introduction
Taishō period, an introduction
Shōwa period, an introduction
Heisei period, an introduction
Royal palaces of Seoul
Conserving Korean lacquer
Royal tombs of the Joseon Dynasty
Sotheby’s returns looted 10th-century statue to Cambodia
The looting of Cambodian antiquities
Thai Buddhist monasteries
Sacred arts of Tibet
The making of a thangka painting
The Mughal painting tradition, an introduction
Amorites, an introduction
Canaanites, an introduction
Hittites, an introduction
The rise of the Ottoman Empire
Photographic views of 19th-century India, an introduction
Sasanian art, an introduction
Illumination of the Qur’an
Mosaics in the early Islamic world
Gold in the Qur’an
Pre-Islamic Arabia
Akkad, an introduction
Arts of the Islamic world
Assyria, an introduction
Assyrian sculpture
Babylonia, an introduction
Cultural heritage at risk: Cambodia
Cultural heritage at risk: Iraq
Cuneiform, an introduction
Jewish history 1750 to WW II
Jewish history in the post-war period
Ancient Persia, an introduction
Modern art and reality
Paleolithic art, an introduction
Sumer, an introduction
The Babylonian mind
The Neolithic revolution
The Safavids, an introduction
Visiting Babylon
Damnatio memoriae—Roman sanctions against memory
Byzantine art, an introduction
Byzantine Iconoclasm and the Triumph of Orthodoxy
Cross-cultural artistic interaction in the Middle Byzantine period
Multilingualism along the Nile
Middle Byzantine secular art
Jewish history to the middle ages
Contemporary art, an introduction
The vita icon in the medieval era
Musical imagery in the Global Middle Ages
Ancient Greece, an introduction
The kingdom of Aksum
The Black Death
Early Christianity, an introduction
How to paint like Yayoi Kusama
Porcelain, gold, and the Dutch East India Company
Rome’s history in four faces at The Met
An interview with artist Ogawa Machiko
Challenges, opportunities, and approaches for studying South Asian art
Cultural heritage at risk: Syria
Cultural heritage at risk: Turkey
The global Baroque, an introduction
The Umayyads, an introduction
Byzantine architecture during Iconoclasm
Early Christian art and architecture after Constantine
The lives of Christ and the Virgin in Byzantine art
The medieval calendar
Ancient Roman art, an introduction
Architecture and liturgy
Greek Vase-Painting, an introduction
Innovative architecture in the age of Justinian
Contrapposto explained
Wearable art in Byzantium
What were the crusades?
Women in Roman art
Writing cuneiform
Ancient and Byzantine mosaic materials
Illuminating the Psalms in Byzantium
Illumination of Jewish biblical texts
Late Byzantine church architecture
Comfort and utility: textiles in everyday life
The impact of the crusades
What can be done to protect cultural heritage?
Seizure of looted antiquities illuminates what museums want hidden
Trafficking the past
Embroidery traditions in British-colonial South Asia
Lost-wax metal casting
Buddhist monasteries
An interview with Maryam Hoseini
Book illumination in the Eastern Mediterranean
Cross-cultural artistic interaction in the Early Byzantine period
The origins of Byzantine architecture
Expression and modern art
Early Byzantine architecture after Constantine
Byzantine architecture and the Fourth Crusade
Late Byzantine secular architecture and urban planning
Common types of mosque architecture
Medieval churches: sources and forms
Middle Byzantine church architecture
Middle Byzantine secular architecture and urban planning
Paintings in the early Islamic world
How was crusading justified?
Regional variations in Middle Byzantine architecture
Tiny timeline: ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in a global context, 2nd–1st millennia B.C.E.
Tiny timeline: ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in a global context, 5th–3rd millennia B.C.E.
Visions of Paradise in a Global Middle Ages
Pilgrimage souvenirs
Arts of the Islamic world: The early period
Arts of the Islamic world: The medieval period
Arts of the Islamic world: The later period
Mother, nation, icon: picturing territory and belonging in South Asia
Connected to the cosmos: sacred textiles
The Geometric period, an introduction
Art Appreciation: Religion—comparisons and connections
Art Appreciation: Nature—comparisons and connections
A Mughal masterclass: how to make paint pigments from stones
Textiles and worship: the image of God
New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, an introduction
Mamluk bindings
Performance art, an introduction
The story of ultramarine from the Silk Road to Renoir
The Middle Ages, an introduction
The court carpets of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires, an introduction
Depictions of Devi
The rise and fall of the Mongol Empire
The complex geometry of Islamic design
The fall of the Ottoman Empire
Ah Xian artist interview
Fluxus, an introduction
Coins of faith and power at the British Museum
Timeline
Standard of Ur, 2600-2400 B.C.E., shell, red limestone, lapis lazuli, and bitumen (original wood no longer exists), 21.59 x 49.53 x 12 cm (British Museum; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Works of Art
Artists
Ai Weiwei, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995 (photo: © Ai Weiwei)
Periods, Cultures, Styles
Prehistoric
before 2000 B.C.E.
Paleolithic
before 10,000 B.C.E.
Jōmon period
c. 10,500–300 B.C.E.
Neolithic
c. 10,000–2000 B.C.E.
Korean Bronze Age
c. 10th–3rd century B.C.E.
Tibetan
to today
Sumerian
c. 5500–2004 B.C.E.
Ancient West Asian
c. 5000 B.C.E.–651 C.E.
Canaanite
c. 4500–1150 B.C.E.
Indus Valley Civilization
c. 3300–1300 B.C.E.
Ancient Aegean
c. 3200–1050 B.C.E.
Amorite
c. 2400–1500 B.C.E.
Akkadian
c. 2334–2193 B.C.E.
Neo-Sumerian (Ur III)
c. 2112–2004 B.C.E.
Babylonian
c. 1894–539 B.C.E.
Palmyra
c. 1800 B.C.E.–273 C.E.
Shang dynasty
c. 1600–1050 B.C.E.
Mycenaean
c. 1600–1050 B.C.E.
Kassite
c. 1600–1000 B.C.E.
Vedic
c. 1500–500 B.C.E.
Hittite
c. 1400–1200 B.C.E.
Assyrian
c. 1365–609 B.C.E.
Iron Age India
c. 1300–200 B.C.E.
Ancient Greek
c. 1100–31 B.C.E.
Geometric period
c. 1100–700 B.C.E.
Zhou dynasty
c. 1050–221 B.C.E.
Western Zhou dynasty
c. 1046–771 B.C.E.
Đông Sơn
1000 B.C.E.–100 C.E.
Sumatran
to today
Eastern Zhou dynasty
770–256 B.C.E.
Ancient Roman
c. 753 B.C.E.–410 C.E.
Protoarchaic
c. 700–600 B.C.E.
Archaic
c. 600–480 B.C.E.
Persian (Achaemenid Empire)
c. 550–330 B.C.E.
Early Classical
480–450 B.C.E.
High Classical
450–400 B.C.E.
Anuradhapura Kingdom
437 B.C.E.–1017 C.E.
Late Classical
400–323 B.C.E.
Hellenistic
323–31 B.C.E.
Nabataean
323 B.C.E–105 C.E.
Mauryan
c. 321–232 B.C.E.
Dura-Europos
c. 300 B.C.E.–256 C.E.
Yayoi period
c. 300 B.C.E.–300 C.E.
Parthian
247 B.C.E.–224 C.E.
Qin dynasty
c. 221–206 B.C.E.
Han dynasty
206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.
Kushan Empire
c. 2nd century B.C.E.–3rd century C.E.
Shunga Empire
c. 185–73 B.C.E.
Sātavāhana dynasty
late 2nd century B.C.E.–early 3rd century C.E.
Gandharan
c. 2nd century B.C.E.–8th century C.E.
Three Kingdoms period
57 B.C.E.–676 C.E.
Silla Kingdom
c. 57 B.C.E.–668 C.E.
Goguryeo Kingdom
37 B.C.E.–668 C.E.
Early Roman Empire
c. 27 B.C.E.–117 C.E.
Baekje
18 B.C.E.–660 C.E.
Quraysh
c. 2nd century C.E.–today
Middle Roman Empire
c. 117–235 C.E.
Kofun period
c. 3rd century–538 C.E.
Pallava kingdom
3rd–9th century
Period of Division
220–589 C.E.
Sasanian
224–651 C.E.
Late Roman Empire
c. 235–410 C.E.
Vākāṭaka dynasty
c. 250–500 C.E.
Cham
c. 300–1471
Hunnic
c. 300–500 C.E.
Javanese
c. 300–today
Gupta dynasty
c. 320–647 C.E.
Medieval
c. 330–1453
Byzantine
c. 330–1453
Early Byzantine
c. 330–843
Northern Wei dynasty
386–534 C.E.
Kalachuri kingdom
c. 6th–7th century
Newar
c. 500–today
Asuka period
538–710
Northern Qi dynasty
550–577 C.E.
Tang dynasty
618–907
Islamic
c. 640–1924
Umayyad
661–750
Unified Silla period
668–935
Nara period
710–794
Abbasid
750–1258
Śailendra Dynasty
c. 750–850
Pala Empire
750–1161
Heian period
794–1185
Angkor Period
802–1432
Samanid
809–1005
Middle Byzantine
c. 843–1204
Chola Empire
c. 850–1279
Chandella period
10th–13th century
Liao dynasty
907–1125
Five Dynasties period
907–979
Fatimid
909–1171
Goryeo dynasty
918–1392
Song dynasty
960–1279
Ghaznavid
977–1186
Hoysala dynasty
1000–1346
Lý dynasty
1009–1225
Seljuq
1040–1307
The Crusades
c. 1095–1291
Ayyubid
1171–1260
Kamakura period
1185–1333
Fourth Crusade and the Latin Empire
c. 1204–61
Mongol Empire
1206–1368
Delhi and Deccan Sultanates
13th–late 17th century
Mamluk Sultanate
1250–1517
Ilkhanid
1258–1335
Late Byzantine
1261–1453
Majapahit Kingdom
c. late 13th–late 15th century
Yuan dynasty
1279–1368
Ottoman
1298–1924
Sukhothai
14th–16th century
Nanbokuchō period
c. 1333/34–92
Vijayanagara empire
1336–1646
Ayutthayan period
1351–1767
Ming dynasty
1368–1644
Timurid
1370–1506
Muromachi period
1392–1573
Joseon dynasty
1392–1897
Iznik
c. 1400–1600
Malayali
15th century–today
Post-Byzantine
1453 and after
Cirebon Sultanate
c. 16th–17th century
Nayak dynasty
16th–17th century
Portuguese Colonial
c. 16th–18th century
Safavid
1501–1736
Indo-Portuguese
c. 1505–1961
Mughal
1526–1858
Azuchi-Momoyama period
1573–1615
Rinpa
c. 1600–1750
Pahari
c. 17th–early 19th century
Edo period
1615–1868
Qing dynasty
1644–1911
Maratha Empire
1674–1818
Zand dynasty
1751–94
Colonial South Asia
c. 1757–1947
Qajar
1779–1909
Chakri dynasty
1782–today
Rattanakosin Kingdom
1782–1932
Dutch East Indian
1800–1949
British Raj
1857–1947
Meiji period
1868–1912
Korean Empire
1897–1910
Modernisms
c. 1900–1980
Japanese colonial period
1910–45
Taishō period
1912–26
Republic of China period
1912–49
International Style
c. 1920–1980
Shōwa period
1926–89
Socialist Realism
1934–91
Mao era
1949–66
Pop Art
c. 1956–75 and after
Brutalist
1960s–70s
Conceptual art
c. 1960–70 and after
Late Modernism/Postmodernism
1962–today
Fluxus
1962–79
Cultural Revolution period
1966–76
Contemporary
1980–today
Heisei period
1989–2019
Asmat
prehistoric–today
