Best Art History Reference Web Site

Dr. Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe's award winning web site offers the very best in online art history resources. Give it a browse.

"Upon completion of his A-Level exams at Reading School in England, Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe, a British subject, moved to Florence, Italy, where he studied painting for three years at the Accademia di Belle Arti. He then moved to the United States to study art history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he received a B.A. Summa cum Laude in 1973 and an M.A. in art history in 1976. He obtained a Ph.D. in art history from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania in 1981. He has been a professor of art history at Sweet Briar College in Virginia since 1983. His primary area of research is Italian Renaissance art with a special interest in sixteenth-century Italian prints on which subject he has written several articles and published two books..."

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Smarthistory - an Online Destination for Art and Art History

Why We Made Smarthistory

We are dissatisfied with the large expensive art history textbook. We find that they are difficult for many students, contain too many images, and just are not particularly engaging. In addition, we find the web resources developed by publishers to be woefully uncreative. We had developed quite a bit of content for our online Western art history courses and we had also created many podcasts, and a few screencasts for our Smarthistory blog. So, it finally occurred to us, why not use the personal voice that we use when we teach online, along with the multimedia we had already created for our blog and for our courses, to create a more engaging "web-book" that could be used in conjunction with art history survey courses. We also realized that this content would be useful to museum visitors and other informal learners. We are committed to joining the growing number of teachers who make their content freely available on the web.

Smarthistory was founded by Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker as a blog in 2005. Since then, many people have contributed their content and skills to the project. - source, Smarthistory Website

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Winner of the Webby Award, Education Category, 2009