Electronic Resources for Art Research

Classical, Ancient Mediterranean and Islamic Art

Seattle Art Museum Ancient Mediterranean and Islamic Art
Selected images from the Seattle Art Museum’s Mediterranean and Islamic art collection.

Islamic Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s collection of Islamic art from different time periods and dynasties. Historical information on each period is included.

Eternal Egypt
The result of a collaboration between the Egyptian Center for Documentation of Cultural and National Heritage (CultNat) and IBM, the Eternal Egypt website provides information on ancient Egypt through technologies such as interactive map and timeline. Art-related topics include libraries, architecture, paintings, sculptures and more.

Discover Islamic Art
Virtual collections from Museum With No Frontiers (MWNF). The network includes public and private collections from 19 countries in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

Persian Splendors
Exhibition of Persian manuscripts from the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The online exhibition is broken up into four parts, mimicking the four-room layout of the original exhibition. It explores techniques, history, artists and literary genres.

Flowers of Silk and Gold
This 2000 exhibition at The Textile Museum in Washington D.C. covered four centuries of Ottoman Empire embroidery. It has been turned into an online exhibition so that virtual visitors can view some of the art that was included.

Islamic Ceramics
Web-based online teaching guide illustrated with images of art in the collections of the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology at Oxford. It's divided into two parts that focus on the creation and history of Islamic ceramics.

ArchNet
An international online community that focuses on Muslim cultures and civilizations. Among the many resources accessible through the site are volumes 1 through 16 of Muqarnas, a publication of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Lantern Slides of Classical Antiquity
Maintained by Bryn Mawr College, these slides provide black-and-white architectural images of the period. Each slide can be viewed as a thumbnail or as a medium- or high- resolution image.

Daily Life in Ancient Egypt in the Time of the Pharaohs
One of the Louvre’s thematic trails, created to provide an overview of the museum’s collection based on a period, artistic movement or theme. This trail reflects the daily life of Egyptians during the pharaohs' rule.

Introduction to Greek Art (PDF)
PDF document compiled by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It provides information on the prehistoric and early periods of Greek art, up through the 5th and 4th centuries B.C.

Islamic Bindings & Bookmaking (PDF)
Islamic Bindings & Bookmaking: A Catalogue of an Exhibition in the Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago, May 18–August 18, 1981 by Gulnar Bosch, John Carswell, and Guy Petherbridge is now available from the University of Chicago as a downloadable PDF document. Consisting of 100 bindings, manuscripts, fragments and pages, this text is considered one of the best resources on the subject.