VISUAL works of art are one of the most important indicators of the degree of any culture’s advancement. The loss of cultural artifacts is a problem that besets many countries today, robbing their people of the pride in the accomplishments of their ancestors that should be their birthright.
The Internet, which facilitates the global sharing of information, partly assuages the sting of such deprivation. For instance, the Egyptian antiquities section of the Louvre, Paris, is a beneficiary of Napoleon’s spoils of war but is also one of many art collections that document their holdings on the web and thus allows Egyptians to learn more about their country’s history. Thanks to the Internet, the right to view such works no longer belongs exclusively to the French and visitors to France.
On the web, one can visit the permanent collections of the world’s largest art museums, which feature the creative output of many civilizations and movements, including Asian, Indian, Islamic, ancient Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Renaissance, and modern art. Smaller art museums are more focused in their approach, showing works that belong to a particular genre or art historical period.
The Asian Art Museum is one of such specialized museums, concentrating on the arts of China, Japan, Korea, the Himalayas, and other parts of the Far East. Located in San Francisco, the museum, the largest collection of Asian art in the West, houses artifacts removed from the cultural and religious context in which they were created and should be viewed. At http://www.asianart.org, the museum shares with Asians and the rest of the world the highlights of its collections (which cover an astonishing 6000 years), current, future, and past exhibitions, and history. Under the ‘Programs’ link, one can read about the museum’s bimonthly tea ceremony, the delights of which, unfortunately, can be availed only by visitors to and residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, and tea’s importance in Japanese architecture and interior design.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, famed the world over for the quality and extent of its collections, is the largest of its kind in New York City. It has one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of Islamic art, which dates from the seventh to the nineteenth centuries and covers a geographical area extending from Spain and Morocco up to Central Asia and India. The museum’s ‘Islamic art’ page, located at http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/department.asp?dep=14, offers a generous selection of fifty works. One of these, the Nur al-Din Room, dates to the Ottoman period and gives the viewer some idea of the interior design of the houses of wealthy Syrians as well as the lifestyle they enjoyed. Although the Internet cannot duplicate the experience of viewing the room firsthand, the web page does provide a description and number of views of the room, its history, and a translation of its inscriptions. In stark contrast to art museums in many other countries, the ones in Pakistan, owing to the dearth of technological know-how rather than a desire to control information about their holdings, have no official web sites. Information about admission fees, timings, and free, guided tours at the Lahore Museum, which has a must-see collection of Gandhara art and 2500 Indian and Persian miniature paintings, is available at http://www.punjab.gov.pk/information/institution_Museums.htm, but this web page offers more of an overview than an in-depth look and contains no photographs. Similarly, Frere Hall, in Karachi, suffers from a lack of Internet exposure. At http://www.bitsonline.net/takhtiart/exhbit_vnu_history.html, one of the Takhti Exhibition 2001’s web pages, visitors can learn more about Frere Hall’s history and style of construction but almost nothing about the Galerie Sadequain, which houses the art museum’s compilation of the works of Pakistan’s most famous modern artist.
Unlike Frere Hall, the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, showcasing Indian art dating from the 1850s onwards, has an official web site. One of http://www.ngma-india.com’s shortcomings is the fact that the information under ‘Events’ is out-of-date; however, the site’s list of featured artists, which includes Amrita Sher-Gil, might nevertheless tempt Pakistani art lovers to take advantage of recently resumed over flights between Pakistan and India and pay a visit to the actual museum.
A chronological discussion of Western art should begin with an analysis of ancient Egyptian art, which, according to recent research, was the inspiration behind the creative ventures of classical Greece. The statuary of the age of the Pharaohs, which gives the theory its impetus, can be seen along with other relics under ‘Egyptian antiquities’ on http://www.louvre.fr/louvrea.htm, the Louvre’s web site in English. The ‘Virtual tour’ link on this large and sophisticated web site brings each of the galleries of the Louvre into your home and offers a tremendous learning opportunity usually denied to people who do not have easy access to the world’s major art collections.
Traditionally considered the cradle of Western civilization, classical Greece made contributions to the fields of mathematics, philosophy, politics, architecture, and art that continue to be relevant. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, provides a synopsis of the ancient Greek achievements in the areas of sculpture and pottery that are included in its antiquities collection on http://www.hermitage.ru/html_En/03/hm3_1_1.html. By clicking the ‘Digital collection’ link, which would probably be of greater interest to students of art than lay people, you can search for a wide variety of artworks, examine their details, and even find similar or related pieces.
A force in the development of Western art, Rembrandt influenced the work of later artists, including Francisco de Goya, through his visually faithful portraits and studies of the human form. He, along with fellow seventeenth century Dutch masters Jan Vermeer and Frans Hals, is well represented at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The museum’s English language web site, http://rijksmuseum.nl/asp/start.asp?language=uk, also shows the work of prominent Northern Renaissance artist Albrecht Drer and medieval Dutch painters and offers a virtual tour of the museum’s exhibits.
London’s Tate Gallery offers a formidable collection of European and American modern art going back to the nineteenth century. Information about the major Western art movements of the past century or so is available at your fingertips at the art museum’s web site, http://www.tate.org.uk/home/default.htm, under ‘Tate Modern’, which boasts a wide variety of important artists ranging from Edgar Degas to Jenny Holzer. Far from compact, the Tate’s web site requires a fair amount of time to appreciate the works on view by means of its many online tools; while doing so, you can also send one of the museum’s free e-cards to a friend.
VISUAL works of art are one of the most important indicators of the degree of any culture’s advancement. The loss of cultural artifacts is a problem that besets many countries today, robbing their people of the pride in the accomplishments of their ancestors that should be their birthright.
