Art Through Time: A Global View

The human impulse to create art is universal. Art has been a way to communicate beliefs and express ideas about the human experience throughout all stages of civilization and in every region of the world. As cultural documents, works of art provide important insights into past and existing cultures, helping us to understand how others have lived and what they valued.

Overview
This overview program includes a sample of each of the 13 programs as well as information on the course’s Web based resources.

1. Converging Cultures
   Throughout history, economic needs, material desires, and political ambitions have brought people from different cultures and communities into contact. Whether clashes or cooperative endeavors, these convergences have brought about the exchange of knowledge and Ideas. In the visual arts, they have led to creative juxtapositions, hybrid styles, and the reinterpretation of traditional signs and symbols. Artists featured include Takashi Murakami, Miguel Luciano and Guillermo Gomez-Peña.
2. Dreams and Visions
   Through art, we can perceive more than what we see with our eyes. From Aboriginal artists painting unseen forces to Surrealists exploring the recesses of the unconscious mind, individuals have found ways to give form to unknowable mysteries, personal fantasies, and inner visions. Artist Sandy Skoglund talks about the life of the imagination.
3. History and Memory
   People have documented history, and also have shaped it through art. Art commemorates achievements and failures, recording and creating communal and personal memories. At times painters and sculptors have appropriated artistic forms of the past to make statements in the present. Multimedia artist Shimon Attie shares work that concerns questions of memory, place, and identity.
4. Ceremony and Society
   Many of the objects and images displayed in museums were never intended to be viewed as static artworks. Different meanings emerge when these works are considered in their original contexts. Masks, costumes, vessels, and other objects were created and used to conduct ceremonies and rituals around the world. Three Traditional Bearers of the tuwaduq Nation create a site for a soul recovery ceremony in the Seattle Art Museum.
5. Cosmology and Belief
   In all cultures, people strive to understand their reason for being and their place in the universe. Although art cannot offer definitive answers to life’s biggest questions, it often serves as a means through which to explore them. Art can be an instrument not only for expressing spiritual beliefs, but also for visualizing myths, organizing the cosmos, inspiring faith, and communing with the divine. Russian artist Vitaly Komar is featured.
6. Death
   Death is a universal experience. Throughout history, art has served to help people understand death, prepare for it, and cope with it. From the funerary arts of ancient Egypt to Mexican Day of the Dead festivities in modern times, art shapes and reflects attitudes toward death, as well as approaches to living. Italian-born artist Angelo Filomeno’s works explore the intermingling of death and fantasy.
7. Domestic Life
   From tables and tapestries to bowls and baskets, art has always figured prominently in domestic life. Within living spaces, objects of aesthetic value have fulfilled practical functions, indulged individual fancies, and expressed shared values. Art turns houses into homes and enriches the activities of everyday life. Textile artist Faith Ringgold explores the line between high art and craft by combining painting, quilted fabric, and storytelling.
8. Writing
   Since the dawn of civilization the relationship between written words and pictures has been manipulated to communicate ideas. It has also inspuired coutless artists, whose works demonstrate how text and image can enhance, supplement, complicate, or even undermine each other’s meanings. Calligrapher, printmaker and Macarthur “genius award” recipient, Xu Bing is featured.
9. Portraits
   Across cultures and throughout time, portraiture has played an important role in the way people have understood themselves and their relationships to others. Portraits serve a range of functions, from declaring power and status to making larger statements about society. Painter Kehinde Wiley paints portraits of African American men in the poses inspired by classic works of the old masters.
10. The Natural World
    From the earliest times, people have found sustenance, solace, challenge, and mystery in the natural world. In representations of animals, landscapes, and earthworks, art has been a means through which humans have negotiated their relationship to nature as well as to each other. We view drawings of the natural world mirrored by a metaphysical concept of the same image in the work of Kay Walkingstick.
11. The Urban Experience
    For thousands of years cities have been hubs of activity, centers of industry, and places from which new aesthetic trends originate, evolve, and spread. The creative visions of planners, painters, architects, and sculptors have shaped the development of cities around the world. In turn, the urban experience has inspired the creation of art work depicting aspects of city life. With the New York City waterfalls, artist Olafur Eliasson offers his urban audience a new kind of experience with nature.
12. Conflict and Resistance
    Throughout history, groups and individuals have sought not only to maintain control over their own lives, but also to assert their power over the lives of others. Visual art has played an important role in documenting such conflict and resistance. It also has served as a means for expressing personal views on politics, war, social inequities, and the human condition. Moroccan-born photographer Lalla Essaydi addresses the complex reality of Arab female identity from the perspective of personal experience.
13. The Body
    From painting to sculpture, body art to performance art, the body has figured prominently in the creative expression of nearly all cultures from the beginning of civilization. Through art, the body becomes a site for defining individual identity, constructing sex and gender ideals, negotiating power, and experimenting with the nature of representation itself. Multimedia performance artist Shigeyuki Kihara makes powerful statements about the depiction of Samoan people, shared memory, societal roles, and sexuality.

Educational Media Reviews Online

THIRTEEN, a member of the WNET.ORG family of companies, is America’s most-watched public television station and a major producer of public media for national and international audiences. Through such acclaimed series as American Masters, Nature, Great Performances, Charlie Rose, Wide Angle, NOW on PBS, Bill Moyers Journal, and Cyberchase—as well as unique local programming, web content and educational outreach—THIRTEEN’s mission is to serve New York City, America and the world with media experiences that inform, enlighten and inspire.

Other projects THIRTEEN has produced for Annenberg Media include: Teaching Multicultural Literature: A Workshop for the Middle Grades; The Expanding Canon: Teaching Multicultural Literature in High School; Science, Simply Amazing; Learning Science Through Inquiry; and, Insights Into Algebra 1.

Executive Producer

Jill Peters

Series Producer

Suzanne Rose

Managing Editor / Writer / Coordinating Producer

Jennifer Hallam, Ph.D.

Producers

Jennifer Hallam, Arash Hoda, Gail Levin, Mark Mannucci, Eva Zelig

Associate Producers

Mark Kachelries, Melissa Mathes

Editors

Molly Bernstein, Jawad Metni, Jed Parker, Tom Patterson, Federico Rosenzvit, Nelson Ryland, Leigh Ann Sides, Mary Ann Toman

Camera / Sound

Steve Baum, Ryan Edwards, Ari Haberberg, Arash Hoda, Sven Lindahl, Mark Kachelries, Bernard McWilliams, Michael Pruitt-Bruun, Ben Shapiro, Ryan Holden Singer

Composers

Julian Harris, Richard Jay, Clare Manchon, Olivier Manchon, Dave Mazza

Sound Mix

Jon Berman, Josh Broome, Ed Campbell

Project Manager

Rekha Menon

Series Graphic Design

B.T. Whitehill

Web Researchers / Writers

Stephanie Carter, Michelle Chen, Beck Feibelman, Claire Levenson, Tony Sachs, Freyda Spier

Production Associate

Margaret Restivo

Production Coordinator

Eliana Cruz

Production Assistants

Tad Barker, Steven Camello, Dana Kirchoff, Maren Landry, Shaun Mader, Matthew McBrayer, Stanley Steen

Interns

Ceylan Conger, Melanie Gelfand, Stephen Grant Haskell, Caroline Healey, Matthew McBrayer, Ji-Sun O, Kelly Perkins, Emily Ridder-Beardsley, Heather Scheuerman, Jami Schultz, Sondra Tannenbaum, Katie Weiller

Lead Content Consultant / Writer

Marilyn JS Goodman, Ed.D.

Content Consultants

Tom L. Freudenheim, Harriet F. Senie, Ph.D.

Advisory Board

Isolde Brielmaier, Ph.D., Lowry Burgess, Jay A. Levenson, J.D., Judith E. Stein, Ph.D., Ann Yonemura

Project Executive

Sandra Sheppard

Executive in Charge

Stephen Segaller

SECOND STORY is a team of visionary designers, developers, and producers that strives to expand the possibilities of interactive media, both technologically and experientially.

We invite you to explore these selected works to experience the diverse ways art, technology and storytelling can blend to fuel wonder.

• Producers
• Jennifer Guibord, Melissa Paugh

• Production Coordinator
• Elizabeth Bourke

• Designer
• Kieran Lynn

• Technology Director
• Thomas Wester

• Developers
• Donny Richardson, Oliver McGinnis, Jeremy Brown, David Brewer, Perla Kacew, Peter Marks

• Production Artist
• Rebecca Rosen