Art Assignment:In Their Shoes Ideas for finding artwork and designs online
Metropolitan Museum of Art (http://www.metmuseum.org/home.asp)
In formation since 1870, the Metropolitan Museum's collection now contains more than two million works of art from all points of the compass, ancient through modern times. About 6,500 objects—highlights from each of the Museum's curatorial departments—can be accessed online.
The textile collection may be particularly useful for this assignment. Click this link:
http://www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/introduction.asp?dep=20
Detail from an 11th century Iranian (Persian) textile fragment.
de Young Museum http://www.thinker.org/deyoung/index.asp
The de Young houses outstanding collections of arts of the Americas, textiles, and art from Oceania and Africa. Click into the textile collection http://www.thinker.org/deyoung/collections/collection.asp?collectionkey=41
The example below is a pair of leggings from Bolivia (early 20th century).
The National Gallery of Art (http://www.nga.gov/)
Works of decorative art allow a close insight into cultures of the past. Among its holdings, the National Gallery has an extensive collection of European furniture, tapestries, and ceramics from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as well as medieval church vessels. In addition, the museum possesses a fine selection of eighteenth- century French furniture and a large group of Chinese porcelains.
Click into decorative arts and scroll down to the various online collections: http://www.nga.gov/collection/gallery/decarts.shtm
The example above is from the Italian Renaissance Ceramics collection.
Ideas for finding images of shoes online
1. Use Google image search
Go to http://www.google.com and click on “images” Use specific terms, i.e. dutch clog, chinese slipper or russian boot Other terms you might want to try include moccasin, sandal & patten
2. Use Electric Library picture database:
From the library computer, double click the Library Resources folder. Open Electric Library Uncheck the boxes for newspapers, magazines, books, maps, audio/video and T.V./radio transcripts. Search by name of shoe or by country or culture AND shoe* Example: russian AND shoe*
You will need a password to access Electric Library from home. Come to the library for all database passwords.