Art history at a mouse click

Over the last five years, the education department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has worked with dozens of curators from 18 different departments to create a wide-ranging web-based chronology of visual and material culture, spanning the globe from Mexico to Malaysia and crisscrossing diverse fields.

An early version of the timeline, beginning around 20,000 B.C., was posted on the Met's web site four years ago.  In October, the museum announced that the timeline has at least reached the present day, with new material covering 1800 to 2004.  Unlike the typical printed encyclopedia organized solely by topic, the timeline has several points of entry, including geography as well as chronology.  Click on a country or time period to access some 5,000 images (mainly drawn from the Met's collection) and some 750 short thematic essays, on everything from Mesopotamian tablets to Italian fresco painting to the latest Düsseldorf photography.

Currently, the timeline logs about 8,000 hits a day (compared to 14,000 daily visitors who climb the museum's steps) with teachers and students leading the way.  That figure doesn't include users inside the museum.

Please check www.metmuseum.org/toah for more information!