Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

functionalism, in art and architecture

(Encyclopedia)functionalism, in art and architecture, an aesthetic doctrine developed in the early 20th cent. out of Louis Henry Sullivan's aphorism that form ever follows function. Functionalist architects and art...

Huntington Library and Art Gallery

(Encyclopedia)Huntington Library and Art Gallery: see Huntington, Henry Edwards. ...

Early Christian art and architecture

(Encyclopedia)Early Christian art and architecture, works of art exhibiting Christian themes and structures designed for Christian worship created relatively soon after the death of Jesus. Most date from the 4th to...

baroque, in art and architecture

(Encyclopedia)baroque bərōkˈ [key], in art and architecture, a style developed in Europe, England, and the Americas during the 17th and early 18th cent. The baroque style is characterized by an emphasis on unity...

pre-Columbian art and architecture

(Encyclopedia)pre-Columbian art and architecture, works of art and structures created in Central and South America before the arrival of Europeans in the Western Hemisphere. For many years the regions that are now ...

Southeast Asian art and architecture

(Encyclopedia)Southeast Asian art and architecture includes works from the geographical area including the modern countries of Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Malaysia, Singapore and In...

Spanish colonial art and architecture

(Encyclopedia)Spanish colonial art and architecture, fl. 16th–early 19th cent., the artistic production of Spain's colonies in the New World. These works followed the historical development of styles previously e...

Whitney Museum of American Art

(Encyclopedia)Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York City, founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney with a core group of 700 artworks, many from her own collection. The museum was an outgrowth of the Whi...

vernier

(Encyclopedia)vernier vûrˈnēr [key], auxiliary scale, either straight or an arc of a circle, designed to slide along a fixed scale. Its unit divisions, usually smaller than those on the fixed scale, permit a far...

ironwork, ornamental

(Encyclopedia)ironwork, ornamental. The shaping of wrought iron, used almost exclusively until the 16th cent., is primarily an art of the blacksmith, who must work with the metal while it is at the desired stage of...