Walk the whole museum.

The first marks humans left, deep in the dark

Gods, kings, and ziggurats rising from the mud of two rivers

Order, eternity, and the afterlife carved in stone

Bull-leapers and octopuses before the Greek world began

Bronze, jade, and ancestor rites cast for eternity

Temples, gold, and gods carved into the Americas' deep past

Vivid tomb frescoes from Italy's forgotten forerunners of Rome

The human body, measured, idealized, and set in motion

empire's face, cast in concrete, marble, and portrait bronze

empire's edicts and enlightenment's face, carved in stone

faith goes public, from catacomb symbols to gold-ground mosaic

portable gold and knotted beasts, art made to travel

faith held in gold mosaic for eleven centuries

a thousand years of faith, craft, and quiet transformation

cosmopolitan splendor along the Silk Road's imperial capital

geometry, script, and light, refined across three continents

gripping beasts and knotted ships, carved by seafaring smiths

quiet mountains, refined ceramics, an empire that prized restraint

thick walls, round arches, saints carved to endure

soaring stone, colored light, and faces turning almost human

blue-and-white porcelain and a court reasserting Chinese order

Europe relearns antiquity and invents the modern artist

Persian precision meets Indian color under imperial patronage

Drama, light, and motion staged for church and crown

Two and a half centuries of peace, painted and printed

Pastel silk, garden flirtation, and aristocratic leisure

Reason, virtue, and Rome revived after the excavations

Feeling, nature, and the sublime over classical reason

empire, industry, and sentiment rendered in oil and iron

Europe's last golden peace, gilded in gaslight and curling line

a century of artists breaking, then rebuilding, the picture itself

art that argues with itself, quotes itself, and doubts the frame

the open-ended now — global, digital, and still being written