Countertop's Art for the Ages takes advantage of the flexibility of the CD-ROM medium to build an art museum inside your computer. By integrating audio clips, interactive links, historical text, time lines, and a zoom function with reproductions of the works themselves, this program emulates the experience of seeing these works in person with a knowledgeable tour guide. It might stand to reason that if the makers of this program bothered to use technology creatively to present a virtual museum, they would then strive to make the content of Art for the Ages innovative as well--but sadly, it's not so.

The objective of this program is clear and admirable: to take works from around the world spanning eight centuries and present them in an interesting, coherent, and educational format. On many fronts, Countertop accomplishes this goal. Art for the Ages is attractively designed and relatively user-friendly. This program, however, is fundamentally flawed, not for what it includes, but for what it omits, namely, women. The only prominent woman in this four CD-ROM set is the Virgin Mary, and even the commentary on her is largely devoted to what she is wearing.

Art for the Ages covers a time span (ending in 1914) that drops off before many renowned female artists escaped the periphery of art history, but that does not excuse the blatant disregard for the importance of women in art as subjects (even objects) or as audience. Even the "in-depth" analysis of male artists' pieces neglects the relationships that artists such as Gauguin, Rodin, and van Gogh had with women, relationships that may have highly influenced their works. The capabilities of the CD-ROM format could have incorporated women and other members of society on the margin into this retelling of art history without usurping the importance of white male artists. What Art for the Ages accomplishes, on the other hand, is that it presents hackneyed perspectives in a post-modern package.--Cintra Pollack