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Museum of Art
CIV at the MOA

Discussion Prompts

Time
Places
Themes
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

16th Century

The Renaissance was a time of renewed interest in the value and potential of the individual. Artists of the late-fifteenth and sixteenth centuries began to observe more true-to-life details of the natural world around them and include them in their artistic depictions...
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

17th Century

During the Baroque period artists sought for ways to make art emotionally relatable to their viewers. Grand scenes that focused on dramatic events graced center stage...
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

18th Century

The eighteenth century saw the expansion of many empires as European nations claimed new territory in America, Africa, and Southeast Asia...
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

19th Century

The nineteenth century witnessed many changes including industrialization, the rise of the middle class, and expansion of global travel. Many government-sponsored art academies patterned after the French École des Beaux-Arts began to flourish across Europe...
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

Turn of the 20th Century

Mural paintings and theatrical pageants were dynamic components of American popular culture at the turn of the twentieth century...
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

20th Century

By the twentieth century, most artists were interested in painting scenes of every day life..
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

21st Century

As American franchises have expanded across the globe, people throughout the world can experience the same convenience of a fast food chain like McDonald’s...
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

England

Nineteenth-century British painting witnessed a plethora of artistic styles that hearkened back to earlier time periods...
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

France

The French artistic tradition exerted the greatest influence in Europe around the time when Louis XIV founded the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1648...
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

Germany

The German aesthetic bears the imprint of a rich tradition that goes back to medieval times. German artists engaged in a variety of media, including sculpture, painting, and printmaking...
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Italy

By the fifteenth century, Florence had become a small city-state with widespread influence in philosophy, art, and architecture...
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

Russia

Russian icon painters have cultivated a consistent style that has remained relatively unchanged for over a thousand years...
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

African American Concerns

African Americans have played an important role in the history of the United States and yet are not as equally represented in the spectrum of American art. However, following the events of WWII the dynamics and realities of a multi-cultural America were captured by more artists of the era...
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Classical Revival

The classical style of Greece and Rome has been revered and revived in many periods of art, even since the time of Charlemagne. Long respected as the forbearers of artistic beauty and perfection...
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

Immigration

Throughout its history, the United States has often represented the promise of economic opportunity and religious freedom...
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

Industry

The need for quality laborers throughout the United States increased dramatically in the early twentieth century as the country’s political and industrial power advanced...
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

Man and Divine

The representation of man’s relationship with the divine has changed dramatically throughout the centuries...
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

Modernism

Artistic styles often change and evolve over time. By definition, modernism embraces that which is new and innovative; however, it may also represent a return to past, even primitive models...
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

Native American Concerns

Western artists interpreted Native American culture repeatedly from a variety of perspectives over the course of American history...
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

Nature

The most distinctive, and perhaps the impressive characteristic of American scenery is its wilderness….For those scenes of solitude from which the hand of nature has never been lifted, affect the mind with a more toned emotion than aught which the hand of man has touched...
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

Religious Symbolism

Symbolism is a rich tradition in religious art that enhances the viewer’s understanding of the metaphorical meaning in an artwork...
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

Social Class

In a review of Daniel Ridgway Knight’s Premier Chagrin (First Grief), Theodore Child of Harper’s Monthly Magazine wrote, “Mr. Knight selects what is beautiful and pretty in the peasant, and avoids all that is hideous and unsightly"...
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Civilization at the BYU Museum of Art

The Individual and the Public Eye

An individual’s lifestyle is often dictated by his/her perceived position in society. Wealth, beauty, age, and family heritage also factor into artistic representation...
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