LibGuides: Humanities: Art Analysis & Research

WRITING ABOUT ART

SPC Libraries have copies of the book A Short Guide to Writing About Art (Author Sylvan Barnet).

This book is an excellent resource that has basic questions to ask when you are conducting an art analysis.

It also has specific suggestions for writing about: painting, sculpture, photography, and more including vantage points, the importance of lines and shapes, color symbolism, etc.

GOOGLE ARTS & CULTURE TUTORIAL

RECOMMENDED LIBRARY DATABASES

Art & Architecture Source Art & Architecture Complete is a robust art research database providing full-text art journals and magazines, plus detailed indexing and abstracts. Useful for artists, art scholars and designers, it covers fine, decorative and commercial art, as well as architecture and architectural design.

ArtStor in JSTOR "ARTstor is a nonprofit digital library of more than one million images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and social sciences with a suite of software tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes."

Biography (Gale in Context) Online experience for those seeking contextual information on the world's most influential people. The new solution merges Gale's authoritative reference content (including Lives & Perspectives) with periodicals and multimedia organized into a user-friendly portal experience while also allowing users to search for people based on name, occupation, nationality, ethnicity, birth/death dates and places, or gender as well as keyword and full text. Funded by: Statewide Allocation
Fine Arts Fine Arts and Music Collection provides access to scholarly journals and magazines that support research in areas including drama, music, art history, and filmmaking. The database emphasizes full-text content for publications included in the Wilson Art Index and RILM bibliography. Funded by: State Library of Florida
JSTOR Access back issues of core journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Over 700 titles available. Funded by: Statewide Allocation

Films Media Group: Art and Architecture

CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ WEBSITES

A catalogue raisonné is a comprehensive, annotated listing of all the known works of an artist either in a particular medium or all media.

IFAR Catalogue Raisonné Database NOTE: The International Foundation for Art Research closed in 2025. This database is offline as of June 2025.
Navigating.art Catalogue Raisonnés for Renoir, Degas, Gaugin, Monet, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Eva Hesse, Franz Kline, and Tom Wesselman.
Print Council of America Debuting in 1983, this key bibliography of catalogue raisonnés for Euro-American prints, anchors works-on-paper research; its online edition launched in 2000.
Wildenstein Plattner Institute Catalogue Raisonnee Databases Catalogue Raisonnees for Bearden, Degas, Guagin, Monet, Renoir, and Tom Wesselmann.

RECOMMENDED ART MAGAZINES

ArtForum Founded in 1962, Artforum is the contemporary art world’s leading tastemaker, renowned for rigorous, provocative criticism and its early championing of era-defining artists.
ArtsJournal From the web site: "ArtsJournal was founded September 13, 1999 in the heady days of the dotcom boom. The site is a digest of some of the best arts and cultural journalism in the English-speaking world. Each day ArtsJournal features link to stories culled from more than 200 English-language newspapers, magazines and publications featuring writing about arts and culture."
ARTNews Since 1902, ARTnews has been the most trusted source for news of the global art world and the art market. It is a digital-first publication that delivers up-to-the minute developments across its website and newsletters.
Frieze Contemporary Art Magazine

RECOMMENDED FOR IMAGE SEARCHING

ArtStor in JSTOR "ARTstor is a nonprofit digital library of more than one million images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and social sciences with a suite of software tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes."
Getty Search Gateway The Getty Search Gateway allows users to search across several of the Getty repositories, including collections databases, library catalogs, collection inventories, and archival finding aids.
Google Arts & Culture Google Arts & Culture features content from over 2000 leading museums and archives. In the Search, use the terms "Native American" or "American Indian" to discover a treasure trove of art, history and culture.

RECOMMENDED REFERENCE RESOURCES

Online Dictionaries and Encyclopedias are great sources of background information.

Artcyclopedia
Art & Architecture Thesaurus The Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) is a structured vocabulary, including terms, descriptions, and other metadata for generic concepts related to art, architecture, conservation, archaeology, and other cultural heritage. Included are work types, styles, materials, techniques, and others
Getty Publications Virtual Library Over 300 e-books from the Getty's collection that you can view or download for free.
The MET's Timeline of Art History The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History presents a thematic, chronological, and geographical exploration of global art history.
Obelisk Obelisk is a place to explore the wildly diverse world of art history. Dive into 40,000 years of human creativity, discover artwork from around the world, and explore the stories of history’s most creative and inspiring people. Obelisk can be used as a textbook for art history or as a resource to support one. More than 100 universities and colleges around the world send students here to dig into the timeline of art and tackle basics like composition and history methodologies.
WikiArt WikiArt is the online home for visual arts from all around the world. Our primary goal is to make world's art accessible to anyone and anywhere. WikiArt already features some 250.000 artworks by 3.000 artists, localized on 8 languages
Smithsonian Institute Art & Design The Smithsonian’s museums display objects from our collections that span the breadth of art and design from the ancient to the modern-day, from the whimsical to the practical. Along with our art-focused programs and research, our work illustrates how art and design are integral to humanity, enriching us all.

CITATION GUIDES

APA Citation Help Guide
by Shilo Smith Last Updated Jun 2, 2025 5356 views this year

MLA 9th Edition
by Michael Crews Last Updated Jun 13, 2025 2445 views this year