LibGuides: Art History: Getting Started

About this Guide

Research Guide for Art History

Here you will find resources to help you with your art history research. Use the side navigation to find:

Resources to find background information on your topic
Places to find books in print and online
Databases for locating scholarly and peer reviewed journal articles, reviews, and newspaper articles
Sources for finding high quality images
Resources for citing your sources and writing in architecture

If you need assistance identifying additional resources, search terms or strategies, you can book an appointment at https://barnard.libcal.com/appointments/mwisner, or email me at mwisner@barnard.edu.

Image: Frida Kahlo, Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress, 1926. Oil on canvas. Wikipedia.org.

Best Bets for Art History Research

Background Resources

Oxford Art Online
Oxford Art Online enables access and cross-search functionality to Grove and Oxford reference content in one location. Provides access to Grove Art Online, Benezit Dictionary of Artists, The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, The Oxford Companion to Western Art, and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms. Includes image partnerships with ARTstor, the British Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Images for College Teaching, Art Resource, Artists Rights Society and numerous international art galleries and artists.

Heilbrunn Timeline of the History of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History presents the Met’s collection through a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of global art history. Great for scholarly contextual information - even for works outside the Met's collection.

Journal Articles

BHA and RILA
A comprehensive bibliographical database of scholarly writing about the history of western art, containing "abstracts and indexes of current publications in the history of art, including scholarly journals, conferences, book, exhibition reviews, and exhibition catalogues." The abstracts may be in English or in French, and index terms (descriptors) are in both English and French. BHA and RILA cover European and American visual arts material published between 1975 and 2007.
International Bibliography of Art (IBA)
The bibliography provides authoritative coverage of international scholarship within the following broad parameters: European art from late antiquity to the present, American art from the colonial era to the present, and global art since 1945; Visual arts in all media, plus decorative and applied arts, museum studies and conservation, archaeology and classical studies, antiques and architectural history, and related fields; Scholarship from at least 500 core journals, plus detailed coverage of monographs, essay collections, conference proceedings and exhibition catalogues; Very international coverage, with at least 60% of records from non-English-language publications (principally German, French, Italian and Spanish).
JSTOR
Beginning August 1st Jstor's image search will replace Artstor. Artstor is a federated search that offers high quality images across art and design fields from museums around the globe.

Image Collections

ARTstor
Artstor is a searchable database of digital images and associated catalog data from museum, archives, galleries and libraries from around the globe. ARTstor documents the fields of architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, design, anthropology, ethnographic and women's studies, as well as many other forms of visual culture. Users can search, view, download and organize images.

Tips for Beginning your Research

Beginning your Research

If you don't know where to start, or even if you do, it's always a good idea to read some background resources on the topic you wish to write about. Not only can they help you get a broad overview of your topic, but because they often include a bibliography of key resources on the topic to help you build your argument. Resources like Oxford Art Online, and the Metropolitan Museum's Heilbrunn Timeline of the History of Art are excellent sources to consult when because their articles offer encyclopedic, but benefit from the fact that they are written by scholars in the field.

A Note on Wikipedia

Another great resources to keep in mind is Wikipedia. While you can't cite Wikipedia because articles on the platform can edited by anyone and the content always in flux, the quality of Wikipedia articles is comparable to that of many scholarly encyclopedias. Furthermore, Wikipedia provides useful citations and external links that you can cite! Finally, because Wikipedia articles can be edited instantly, you are more likely to find information on research conducted in the last year than you would find in a scholarly encyclopedia that requires a lengthy peer review process to be published.

Museum Collection Databases

Another place to find information about the object your researching are museum collections databases. For many objects they may be the only place that references your particular object. Mining museum databases for information about object's creator, period of creation, and related contextual information can be a great first step to finding keywords to use in your searching. Occasionally these databases even provide further reading.

Keywords Derived from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Collections Database:

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/544514

Fragment of a Queen's Face, ca. 1353 - 36 B.C. Yellow jasper. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Artist/Creator: Unknown
Movement/Style/Period: New Kingdom, Amarna Period
Location/Region:Egypt
Technique: Sculpture
Culture/Religion/Reign: Rein of Akhenaten