Preserving art through the ages is more than placing a designated object in a museum, properly storing and exhibiting it. Preservation involves more than preventing the destruction and looting of sites or the theft of and illicit trade in antiquities. It is more than conservation—that is, the assessment, documentation, and stabilization of an artifact's condition, and, if necessary, the skill and judgment to rescue an artifact, to intervene using a reversible treatment, and to follow with a program of monitoring stability.

The planispheric astrolabe occupies a special place among early scientific instruments because of its mathematical sophistication, its elegant appearance, and its usefulness to astronomers in pre-telescopic times. The operation of the astrolabe is based on the mathematical properties of stereographic projection, concepts that were understood by the time of Ptolemy in the second century a.d., although surviving instruments are from much later periods.

The technical sophistication and virtuosity of prehispanic Andean ceramics are so often praised in the literature that it may appear that there is a large body of supportive, empirical findings. To the contrary, in-depth technical and more comprehensive technological studies have been rare. To achieve a comprehensive understanding of the many facets and stages of the technology and organization of craft production requires a correspondingly comprehensive, sustained effort—one built on interdisciplinary collaboration and longterm regional study of environmental, historical, social, and technological factors.

When North China was invaded in 1127, the emperor of the Song dynasty moved the capital to Lin'an (now called Hangzhou) in Zhejiang Province southeast of Shanghai. He established the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279 a.d.), known as a period of cultural flowering and stability in Chinese history. Several years later, official kilns were built by court officials to meet the need for the porcelains required for use at the Southern Song palace.

Studying the raw materials used by ancient glassmakers provides information about ancient glassmaking practices, the relationship between glassmaking and other craft technologies (silicate-based or non-silicate-based), and the trading patterns of specific cultures. Colored opaque glasses are of particular interest because they were among the first mass-produced and mass-distributed glasses.

Mountains give the illusion of durability because their grand scale hides the continual weathering of their surfaces. When the same stone is used to create a sculpture, the loss of a few millimeters suffices to spoil, or even eliminate, the features of a face; the rate of loss may be surprising, but it is not necessarily unnatural.

Some of the most important cultural icons in the world are oil paintings. Preserving them for future generations requires a fundamental understanding of the long-term chemical, mechanical, and physical behavior of their components. If the properties are understood, modeling and even predicting the effects of exposure to changes in temperature, relative humidity, shock, and vibration are possible.

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) and Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) are perhaps the best-known members of the abstract expressionist movement, a group of diverse artists from disparate backgrounds who radically transformed American art during the 1940s and into the 1950s. While the development and legacy of abstract expressionism remains a subject of considerable debate, what this diverse group of artists had in common was the belief that the materials, and the ways the artists applied them, are crucial to the expression of their art.