The closure of university libraries and art museums due to the COVID-19 pandemic meant that art history instructors needed to find fully online resources to provide students with experiential learning experiences. The Historians of Art Association responded to this need by gathering together a group of art history scholars to share best practices and online resources. The July 2020 webinar “Online Resources for Teaching Islamic Art” included presentations from Christiane Gruber (Michigan, Art History), Ruba Kana’an (Toronto, Visual Studies), Michael Toler (MIT, Aga Khan Documentation Center), and Matt Saba (MIT, Aga Khan Documentation Center) on the use of online library and museum resources in the remote classroom. Click here to watch a recording of “Online Resources for Teaching Islamic Art”.
A description and link to several of the resources discussed in “Online Resources for Teaching Islamic Art” can also be found below.
Archnet
Archnet aims to provide access to unique visual and textual material to facilitate teaching, scholarship, and professional work on Muslim architecture, urbanism, environmental and landscape design, visual culture, and conservation issues.
British Library – Turning the Pages
Turning The Pages is used by the British Library and other institutions to provide access and interpretation for rare books, manuscripts, and single sheet items such as maps. The British Library’s Turning the Pages site includes copies of important Muslim manuscripts such as The Memoirs of Babur and Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an. Users are able turn through the pages of these manuscripts. Each page also includes a narrated description of each page.
The MET Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History pairs essays and works of art with chronologies, telling the story of art and global culture through the Museum’s collection. Users can access 533 works of Islamic art from the Early, Medieval, and Modern period in addition to essays and other materials.