A new online Encyclopedia of South Asian Art from the MAP Academy, supported by the new Museum of Art and Photography in Bengalaru, India. The Encyclopedia aims to ‘make art histories more accessible, based on the idea that doing so can have a positive social impact through broadening perspectives on humanity, heritage and culture.’ It covers ’10 000′ years of art history with the focus on South Asian art, the articles cover art movements.
From the website:
We are committed to presenting art histories from a non-hierarchical perspective while remaining sensitive to inequities that have long governed the subject. Most of our content is written, edited and peer-reviewed by our in-house team, and we consider a range of sources when conducting research — from oral traditions to sacred and mythological texts and histories to subject-specific interviews. All of our work is advised by a panel of scholars, writers and art practitioners from across the world.’
The encyclopedia has almost 2000 entries, some short summaries, but many are longer articles with detailed descriptions, illustrations, reference lists and links to collections and further reading. It draws on existing open source digital collections like Wikimedia Commons, Cooper Hewitt Museum, the Met, and others. This demonstrates the value of collections allowing free and simple reuse of digitised collections, these works of art can now be set in a richer context and links made between different collections across the world. The layout is easy to navigate and there are useful efforts to group articles together in clusters, and to guide the reader toward areas that include detailed write-ups.
Visit the Encylopedia here: https://mapacademy.io/
