If you were starting to think that the 21st century has exclusive rights to violent imagery, this exhibition from the Art Institute of Chicago provides a correction. Dating back to the 1500s, the show includes both inspirational and terrifying visions of war, violence, and patriotism. One of the earliest works, by Master with the Mousetrap, c. 1512, The Two Armies at the Battle of Ravenna, depicts...

Beloit College is the oldest college in the state of Wisconsin, and they are well regarded for their study abroad programs and focus on international and global affairs. They have also revamped their online digital collections area, and it is well worth a glance. Currently, they have ten collections here, including "Logan Museum of Anthropology", "Beloit-College, City and Environs", and "Asian...

One upside to many museums closing their doors in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is that virtual exhibits are surging in popularity. Inviting visitors to #MuseumFromHome, the Benaki Museum (physically located in Athens, Greece) offers wonderful virtual explorations of many of their campuses and galleries. At the link above, visitors can select an exhibit or collection of interest (perhaps you...

The royal arts of the Benin Kingdom of south-central Nigeria focus on the centrality of the "Oba", or divine king, and this exhibit, organized by museums in Austria, Africa, Germany, the U.S., and France, traces the history of Benin's royal arts from the early 13th century to the mid-twentieth. On the exhibition's website there are ten themes to explore including "The Warrior Obas", "The Oba's...

In a city known for creative expression and its free-thinkers, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) is a major cultural institution. The site is a veritable cornucopia of artistic endeavors, including film, performance art, installations, and lectures. Visitors planning a trip to either institution will want to click on the "Visit" section, and others with a more scholarly...

Born in 1900, Betty Parsons was one of the leading art dealers in New York City specializing in modern art; her gallery on 57th Street was a hub of activity for decades. As a young person, she lived in Paris for 10 years studying painting and sculpture, returning to New York in 1935. During the postwar period, she represented Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, and Mark Rothko. It was an exciting...

The University of Washington Libraries worked tirelessly to create this remarkable digital collection of materials related to rare literary works from the post-WWII period in Korea. This period from 1945 to 1950 is known as the "liberation space," and proved to be a "temporal space of blossoming post-World War Korean art and literature." First-time visitors can read the excellent exhibit essay,...

Entering Beyond the Visible: The Art of Odilon Redon is to be transported into the artists' dreamlike, surreal world. Several dozen of the works in the exhibition are arranged into three main themes: Monsters, Metamorphosis and Tales. The Monsters section includes some of Redon’s most reproduced images, such as Eye-Balloon, 1878; Spider, 1887; and The Egg, 1885. In the Tales section, one should...

Fans and scholars of medieval illuminated manuscripts may enjoy BiblioPhilly, a new digital interface for the Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis project. This three-year project, which launched in 2016, has been digitizing 160,000 manuscript pages held by 15 libraries to "create the country's largest regional online collection of medieval manuscripts." The BiblioPhilly interface was made public in...

The archeological site known as the Biderbost site was discovered in 1959 "after the Snoqualmie flooded, and revealed many basketry fragments, fishhooks, net weights, projectile points, adzes, chisels, choppers, scrapers, and knives. " This collection of basketry now resides at the University of Washington's Burke Museum in Seattle, and the excellent online site devoted to the collection examines...