Website Review Paper

Overview
This project will allow you to explore the wealth of excellent online resources available to art history students. Since your textbook includes only an overview of major works of art and art historical issues, this assignment will allow you to focus on a work or issue in greater detail as it is presented online on a museum or other educational website. By studying a site and presenting a report on that site to your classmates, you will begin to develop a collection of free trustworthy resources at your fingertips, as well as a discriminating eye for scholarly art historical analysis.
Learning Outcomes

 By the end of this assignment, you will have:

• Become familiar with a diverse selection of credible online resources in art history
• Learned how to glean useful knowledge from these websites that will aid in your understanding of art history
• Developed an in-depth report on one of these website

Task Description

Review the websites below and select ONE on which you will focus. You can select any one of the sites depending on your interest in a particular region or era. For that site, familiarize yourself with most of the links therein and concepts and artworks covered. Develop a report on this site for the benefit of your classmates in which you summarize the main ideas presented, provide an in-depth description of a couple of those ideas, apply them to the material presented in the appropriate chapter in your textbook (i.e. ancient Greece and Rome, Renaissance Art, Baroque Art, etc), and bring in relevant research to support your observations. Also, bring in a couple of these images as illustrations of these concepts, including one or more of the works considered in the website. Consider the following questions as you proceed: on what does the site focus? Is it informational, argumentative, etc?; What can we learn about the art and its culture that the textbook does not provide?; What questions do you still have? What have you discovered through further research that adds to our understanding of artist, issue, etc? You may come up with other questions and answers, but these are a good place to start.

1) The Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc

http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/index.html

2) The British Museum: Assyria, Babylonia, Sumer

http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/menu.html

3) History: The Egyptians

   http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/

4) The Parthenon Marbles: The British Museum vs. The Hellenic Ministry of Culture

   http://www.britishmuseum.org/the_museum/news_and_debate/debate/parthenon_sculptures.aspx

and http://odysseus.culture.gr/a/1/12/ea120.html

5) The False Door: Dissolution and Becoming in Roman Wall-Painting
http://creadm.solent.ac.uk/custom/rwpainting/cover/index.html

6) Beyond the Fingers: The Sistine Chapel Revealed

http://www.ronibennun.com/beyond/beyond.html

7) Universal Leonardo (on the Renaissance artist, Leonardo da Vinci)

http://www.universalleonardo.org/

8) Johannes Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance (National Gallery of Art)

http://www.nga.gov/feature/vermeer/index.shtm
You might also watch the short video on this painting produced by the National Gallery. You can find it here http://www.nga.gov/podcasts/ Click on “The Collection” on the left side of the page and scroll down until you reach “Vermeer: Master of Light-Woman Holding a Balance, Part I.”

Process & Requirements:

1) Thoroughly review your chosen website. Create an outline or diagram on paper as you do this so that you can better understand how the site is designed and what topics are covered. In your own words, summarize the main ideas. Note the direction or purpose of the site. Right click and save a couple of the images that you believe are good illustrations of these ideas. Or, search for these images online and import them into your report. Note any artists or works that are covered both on the website and in your textbook and compare the information given on them. If available, please make sure that you credit the artist and work by giving the name, title, date, and medium!

2) Conduct a little bit of research online on this topic. Try to determine the website’s accuracy, learn more about the topic, and/or compare it with other works by the same artist or from the same period by seeking out a good, online resource on the subject. These sites are good places to start: http://arthistoryresources.net/ARTHLinks.html; http://www.besthistorysites.net/index.php/art-history; and http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/ . Find 1 good source and integrate any information found here into your presentation, if relevant to your topic. Make sure you cite your source by author and/or site name within your presentation. Please note that sites like Wikipedia or an unverifiable source (personal blog, etc.) are NOT acceptable sources for this presentation.

Additional Files:

Overview-of-Final-Project-Art-AppreciationII.docx