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AP Art History — 1750 to Present and Global Traditions flashcards

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Required works from Europe and the Americas after 1750 and from the Indigenous Americas, Africa, West and Central Asia, South, East and Southeast Asia, the Pacific and global contemporary art, by maker, date, medium and context.

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Learn deck · part of AP Art History · written against: College Board AP Art History Course and Exam Description (ten units, 250 required works). Updated 2026-10-10.

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  1. In Joseph Wright of Derby's A Philosopher Giving a Lecture on the Orrery (c. 1763–1765), what stands in for the sun, and what does the scene celebrate?
    A hidden lamp at the center of the solar-system model lights the listeners' faces in strong chiaroscuro. The painting treats Enlightenment science with the awe once reserved for religious subjects.
    Later Europe and Americas › Enlightenment to Romanticism
  2. What makes Fragonard's The Swing (1767) a definitive Rococo painting?
    Pastel colors, a frothy garden and a flirtatious, private subject: a young woman kicks off her slipper toward a hidden admirer while an unaware older man pushes the swing — the aristocratic playfulness later condemned by Neoclassical critics.
    Later Europe and Americas › Enlightenment to Romanticism
  3. What is the Lanzón at Chavín de Huántar, and where is it placed?
    A towering stone carved as a god with fangs, claws and serpent hair. It stands at the heart of the Old Temple at Chavín (900–200 BCE), where dark galleries meet, out of public view, so its viewers were most likely priests alone.
    Indigenous Americas
  4. What ritual does Yaxchilán Lintel 25 show?
    The Maya queen Lady Xok has performed bloodletting, and a vision serpent rises before her with an armed warrior (perhaps an ancestor) emerging from its jaws — a scene tied to her husband's accession that legitimizes his dynasty.
    Indigenous Americas
  5. Why was Great Zimbabwe's origin misrepresented by colonial writers, and what does the site actually show?
    Europeans claimed Africans could not have built it, but the dry-stone granite walls and conical tower (c. 1000–1400 CE) were built by Shona peoples, ancestors of the modern nation that took its name.
    Africa
  6. Why do wooden beams stick out of the walls of the Great Mosque of Djenné?
    The protruding timber beams act as permanent scaffolding for the annual replastering festival of the adobe (mud-brick) mosque; the current building dates from 1906–1907.
    Africa
  7. What happened to the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001?
    The Taliban destroyed them. The colossal rock-cut figures with plaster and paint (c. 400–800 CE) once marked a Buddhist center on the Silk Road in Afghanistan.
    West and Central Asia
  8. How did worshippers use the Great Stupa at Sanchi, and how is the Buddha shown on its gateways?
    They walked clockwise around the relic mound (circumambulation). The carved toranas tell the Buddha's life aniconically, through symbols such as footprints, an empty throne or the Bodhi tree.
    South / East / Southeast Asia
  9. What is Nan Madol, and how was it built?
    The ceremonial and political center of the Saudeleur dynasty on Pohnpei, Micronesia: artificial islets built from stacked basalt prismatic columns laid crosswise like logs.
    The Pacific
  10. Why was Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982) controversial at first?
    Its black granite wall, cut into the ground in a V, lists names of the dead chronologically, without heroic statues — critics called it a 'gash' of shame. Its polished, reflective surface mirrors visitors among the names, and the once-attacked design is now counted among America's great memorials.
    Global Contemporary

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About these cards

Review status: Second-reader reviewed, with corrections applied.

Checked against:

  • Topic outline follows the College Board AP Art History Course and Exam Description (effective Fall 2020, with the clarifications implemented for Fall 2026), Units 4–10 and the required image set; no text copied.
  • Facts checked against Smarthistory (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0); reference only, no text copied.

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