Works in this selection
What a mark remembers
The exact jar and Met print above anchor this visual reading. Their juxtaposition is an editorial comparison, not a claim of influence.
Visual essay · Sources and claim limits inside
The Metropolitan Museum of Art / New York
What can a vessel carry besides water?
Boats travel around a rounded jar. A wave gathers on paper. Small cotton squares become a field. Begin with a mark, then follow what happens when its surface changes.
Browse 49 selected works →Have five minutes? / An Artologium looking sequence
A mark finds a surface
Three works, three pauses. These questions invite close looking; they do not propose a historical connection between the objects.
A vessel carrying boatsMaker unrecorded · ca. 3500–3300 BCEThe Metropolitan Museum of Art · CC0 Full supplied image / A looking promptOriginal museum record ↗A boat, held in a curve.
Follow the long painted hull, then the repeated strokes beneath it. The image bends with the vessel; this crop brings a single painted passage into view.
01 / Turn
A vessel carrying boats
Follow the painted boats around the curve. What disappears beyond the photograph’s edge?
Look closely & read the record →
Under the Wave off KanagawaKatsushika Hokusai · ca. 1830–32The Metropolitan Museum of Art · CC0 02 / Find
Under the Wave off Kanagawa
Find the small mountain beneath the wave. Notice how scale changes where your eye settles.
Look closely & read the record →
Burgoyne Surrounded quiltMartha A. Page · 1852The Metropolitan Museum of Art · CC0 03 / Repeat
Burgoyne Surrounded quilt
Choose one red square and follow its neighbours. At what point does a piece become a pattern?
Look closely & read the record →
Into the Afterlives lab
The record opens a story.
A work can lead to a question about transmission. The connection below tells you precisely how this museum enters each investigation.
Image in this selection
A blue that crossed borders.
The Met impression illustrates this investigation; its material-history evidence comes from a separate British Museum record.
Visual essay · Sources and claim limits inside
What is here / 49 selected works
A partial view.
An open door.
Our selection moves between prints, vessels, textiles and other objects. It began with eight close-looking works and now includes a wider group of reusable museum records. It is a partial editorial selection, not a survey of the museum’s departments.
Across collections / 01
Which Great Wave?
One familiar design. Two museum objects. What changes when you stop treating an image as a single thing?
Two complete supplied images
Same design. Separate records.
Open either image for the original view and source. The display sizes are not physical scale; image differences alone cannot establish condition or printing order.
Collection sources & reuse
Every selected image links to its museum record and CC0 dedication. The image’s source control includes its accession, original file and credit.