How to Make an Art History Timeline

Art history combines the study of artists' lives and works with the culture, politics and religious atmosphere of the artists' time. An art history timeline places world events and artwork in chronological order. Using art history timelines can help students see how events and inventions throughout history influenced the artists in each period.

Things You'll Need

• Art history books
• World history books
• Index cards
• Large roll of white paper
• Ruler
• Pencils
• Colored markers
• Photographs of artists and masterpieces
• Glue sticks

Instructions

1. Determine the scope of your art history timeline. Decide what time span you will cover, which countries or continents you will include and which individual artists will be represented. A timeline can be huge, spanning thousands of years, or it can be a smaller project, covering just a single century or decade.

2. Research the artists who you will feature on your timeline. Use index cards to make notes about their birth and death dates, where they lived and the names and dates of their major works.

3. Use history books to research world events or important inventions that occurred during the time period you will be covering on your timeline. For example, include the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 on an 18th century American art timeline. This will put the art of someone like Gilbert Stuart, the great portrait artist of the era, in context. Stuart painted the likenesses of such famous people from the period as George Washington. Your timeline will portray an immediate conection between Stuart's work and Washington's achievements so a viewer can understand the fame and importance of both individuals.

4. Prepare small pictures of artists and inventions for your timeline to add color and make it more interesting to read. Make photocopies from your art books or print images from the Internet.

5. Spread out a long roll of white paper on the floor or a large table. This is similar to the kind of paper used to cover a table at a party and is available at most craft and party stores.

6. Draw a horizontal line down the middle of the paper, using a ruler and a pencil. Make vertical lines at even intervals, indicating a certain block of time. One line could stand for 50 years, for instance.

7. Label the start of the timeline with your beginning year and write in the subsequent years until you reach your ending point. Draw over all the pencil marks you have made with black marker.

8. Assign each type of timeline entry a different color. Artists and artworks can be one color, historical events another shade and religious or social history a third hue. This will be more attractive to the eye than plain black and will help viewers distinguish the different aspects covered.

9. Use the notes you have taken to place each artist and event on the timeline in chronological order. Label each item clearly and concisely in its assigned color. Put the pictures in the appropriate spots with a glue stick.

Tips & Warnings

• An art history timeline can be a great way for a teacher to combine art and history units in the classroom. Assign each student an artist and a range of years to research and then complete the timeline together as a class project.