This guide is intended to help you research topics in art and art history, a field with a wide variety of library resources. Art research encompasses the study of painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, design, graphic arts, and intersects other subjects such as geography, anthropology, and mass media.

Using the tabs at the top, navigate to locate the specific type of resources that you need: reference encyclopedias and dictionaries, books, journals and research databases, and web resources. Use the tab for Image Resources to find links to many online sources for images you can use for study and research.

 Dada collage, attributed to Hugo Ball, c.1915.

Develop your research topic

What are the key concepts of your topic?  Do you need to broaden or narrow your focus? Consider focusing on one or more of the following:

• time period
• place
• specific event   
• specific people

Does your topic overlap other subject areas such as anthropology, geography or political science?

Think of 2-3 questions that you will need to explore.

• Consider the history of your topic, and its categories.
• Who are the key people? What did they do? Why did it happen?

Under each question, think about the following:

• What do you already know about your topic or issue?
• What do you need to learn to better understand your topic or issue?
• What kind of information resource might provide the answer to these questions?

Consider your audience.

• Who will read your paper?
• Why will it be of interest to them?
• What will be new to them?

For more tips, see the Writing Research Papers guide.

For tips on creating a bibliography using MLA, see Bibliographic Citations using MLA Style.