This assignment comes to you from Chicago based artist Geof Oppenheimer. Geof's work reflects personal experience and the social and political atmosphere they were created in, and he wants you to make an object that does the same. John...

Women were excluded from almost all cultural and social resources in the centuries from 1400 to 1900 when so much of the world's great art was created. And visual art was almost entirely a male industry before modern times. Having...

Was da Vinci an artistic genius? Sure, but he was also born in the right place at the right time -- pre-Renaissance, Western artists got little individual credit for their work. And in many non-Western cultures, traditional forms have...

From cave paintings to public murals, humans have told stories with art for thousands of years. In this episode of Crash Course Art History, we discover that visual storytelling is elementally human — and so is competing over whose story...

The Art Assignment continues its journey through New Orleans with Brandan "BMike" Odums, the mastermind behind "ExhibitBE", a collaborative street art exhibition that transformed an unoccupied apartment building and gave it new life. Now...

Europe was in transition politically and culturally at the beginning of the 20th century. Today, we're looking at the dawn of modern science, and the rise of Modernism in the arts, especially in music, dance, and visual arts. We'll look...

In 1982 at the age of just 22 years old, Jean-Michel Basquiat would produce this painting. A powerful and dazzling image that mixes text, colour, symbolism and mark-making in a raw and uncensored explosion.



In a single...

"Thoroughly researched and cleverly presented, with stunning visuals, Great Art Explained makes you realise that familiarity with a work of art sometimes makes us indifferent to its power" - Forbes Magazine, 9 July 2020

"Thoroughly researched and cleverly presented, with stunning visuals, Great Art Explained makes you realise that familiarity with a work of art sometimes makes us indifferent to its power" - Forbes Magazine, 9 July 2020

"What a brilliant series this is" - Stephen Fry on Twitter 12 December 2020



"Thoroughly researched and cleverly presented, with stunning visuals, Great Art Explained makes you realise that familiarity with a work of art...

We come to you from San Francisco's Exploratorium, where we met with artist-in-residence Zarouhie Abdalian. For her assignment, she wants you to focus on boundaries and the relationships between the spaces they separate. Sarah Green then...

This week we kick off The Art Assignment Book Club with Dave Hickey's "Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy." We discuss everything from John geeking out in a library to Michael Jackson's chimpanzee - Bubbles. Oh, and we discuss the...

As the United States became a nation, it also needed to invent a new visual vocabulary in its history paintings. This is the story of how that happened.

An explanation of Ekphrasis: the art of describing a visual experience in words. This is done through a look at Sophie Calle's art works "Last Seen" and "What do you see?"

This video is an art historical analysis of Lorna Simpson's photograph "Waterbearer", but it's also about why and how we engage with art.

The Art and Science of "Seeing" La Rue Montorgueil by Claude Monet "If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes." Pablo Picasso

When radium was first discovered, its luminous green color inspired people to add it into beauty products and jewelry. It wasn't until much later that we realized that radium's harmful effects outweighed its visual benefits....

Spray-painted subway cars, tagged bridges, mural-covered walls -- graffiti pops up boldly throughout our cities. And it turns out: it's nothing new. Graffiti has been around for thousands of years. And across that span of time, it's...

Spray-painted subway cars, tagged bridges, mural-covered walls -- graffiti pops up boldly throughout our cities. And it turns out: it's nothing new. Graffiti has been around for thousands of years. And across that span of time, it's...

Museums have been a part of human history for over 2,000 years -- but they weren't always like the ones we visit today. J.V. Maranto uncovers the evolution of museums, from the first museum in 530 BC (curated by a princess) to PT...

In 1974, farmers digging a well near their small village stumbled upon one of the most important finds in archaeological history _ vast underground chambers surrounding a Chinese emperor's tomb that contained more than 8,000 life-size...

After Rome was destroyed, people were wary of attachment to physical beauty. As Christianity gained traction, Romans instead began to focus on the metaphysical beauty of virtue, and art began to follow suit. James Earle discusses how...

It's hard to imagine Venice without the curious, banana-shaped gondolas that glide down the canals. How did these boats come to be the trademark transportation of Venice? Laura Morelli details the history of the gondola, explaining why...

What does a cultural Big Bang look like? For Amit Sood, director of Google's Cultural Institute and Art Project, it's an online platform where anyone can explore the world's greatest collections of art and artifacts in vivid, lifelike...