• centers of ecclesiastical authority;
• marvels of architectural genius and innovation;
• places to instruct communities about cherished Christian values and lessons, and
• sites of political, cultural, intellectual, and economic importance.

Whether they’re located in the heart of a major city or on the outskirts of a rural town, cathedrals possess a spiritual, artistic, and historical grandeur that deserves to be experienced and felt by Christians and non-Christians alike. But rather than traveling around the world to get just a cursory, ground-level glimpse of their greatness, bring these captivating buildings—in their entirety—right into your own home with The Cathedral.

In this course, noted medieval historian and award-winning Professor William R. Cook has crafted an exciting, immersive, and multidimensional experience that will bring you closer to cathedrals like Notre Dame in Paris and those in Amiens, Chartres, and Canterbury than any on-site tour could hope to do. These 24 lavishly illustrated lectures make use of high-definition 3-D modeling and imagery to not just show you the world’s great Gothic cathedrals, but to take you around and inside them, revealing new perspectives you can’t enjoy anywhere else.

A Consummate Guide

Professor Brettell is a scholar, an author, a teacher, and a former museum director, known to many Teaching Company customers for his dazzling investigation of a much-loved period in From Monet to Van Gogh: A History of Impressionism and his overview of a legendary cultural icon in Museum Masterpieces: The Louvre. Above all, he is a consummate guide who delights in selecting superb works of art and then exploring their resonance with other works. For example, in this course he exploits The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s wide-ranging holdings to draw your attention to masterpieces that share intriguing similarities, linking different cultures, genres, and periods.

In Art across the Ages, Professor Ori Z. Soltes has crafted a course in Western visual art that serves as both a mind-broadening survey and an essential introduction. It is designed to give anyone interested in Western art a firm familiarity with its basics, acquainting you with major artists and styles in various media and providing a broad foundation for deeper exploration.

By giving you a ready grasp of the substance and significance of a vast range of artists and their work, along with a solid knowledge of how those artists and their work fit within art’s continuum, this course will add immeasurably to your next visit to a museum or exhibition or simply enhance your pleasure in the art you encounter in your life.

You will also find works that are completely new to you. Plus you’ll be introduced to lesser-known artists—perhaps names you’ve heard but never connected to specific works—and you’ll understand why they deserve to be classed among the great masters.

Born in Guyana (then British Guiana) in 1934, at 19 years old Bowling moved to London. He went on to study painting at the Royal College of Art alongside David Hockney and R.B. Kitaj.

After graduating with a silver medal, he spent the next 60 years criss-crossing the Atlantic between studios in London and New York. Maturing into a master of his medium, he developed a visionary approach that fuses abstraction with personal memories. Now 85 he still paints every day, experimenting with new materials and techniques.

The exhibition brings together a lifetime of large-scale artworks. It includes key series such as the iconic ‘map paintings’, the visually arresting ‘poured paintings’ made by pouring paint down an inclined surface, and the sculptural paintings of the 1980s evoking riverbeds, all the way to mature work selected from a recent period of explosive productivity.​

Born 1867, Bonnard was, with Henri Matisse, one of the greatest colourists of the early 20th century. He preferred to work from memory, imaginatively capturing the spirit of a moment and expressing it through his unique handling of colour and innovative sense of composition.

The exhibition concentrates on Bonnard’s work from 1912, when colour became a dominant concern, until his death in 1947. It presents landscapes and intimate domestic scenes which capture moments in time – where someone has just left the room, a meal has just finished, a moment lost in the view from the window, or a stolen look at a partner.

Organised by Tate Modern in collaboration with Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen and Kunstforum Wien.

Van Gogh lived in England as a young man for several crucial years. He walked the streets alone, dreaming of the future. He fell in love with British culture, especially the novels of Charles Dickens and George Eliot. And he was inspired by the art he saw here, including paintings by Constable and Millais which are featured in the exhibition. They affected his paintings throughout his career.

The exhibition also looks at the British artists who were inspired by Van Gogh, including Francis Bacon, David Bomberg, and the young Camden Town painters. It shows how his vision set British artists on the road to modern art.