Tuesday, April 15, 2008

The Library & The Internet

Library Websites:

Since a majority of your information must come from printed text, you are going to have to visit a library at least once. To save yourself time, search the catalogues to see what is available before you go. Write down the title and call #s. It will save hours if you do this before you go to the Library. Don’t be afraid to ask for help while there. In fact, if you go to MASS Art Library, they will be expecting you!

Your Best Bet for Art Research:

Mass College of Art (Green Line, E train near Northeastern & MFA)
Boston Public Library (Green Line, Copley Square)

I have also had students go to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and be let into the special archives room.
Boston College
Boston University
Or Google any other college library and browse its online catalogue before making the trip. You can call them and see their policies. Most are open to the public (except Harvard) but you will probably not be able to check out books.

Some good Art Magazines with websites.

Libraries will often have these archived. But you can see which issues, if any, relate to your artist before you go searching:
Art Forum
Modern Painters
ARTnews
It is also a good idea to Google your artist and see what scholarly work and books you can find. It is helpful to have a list of title from which to choose to look for before you go to the library. The more time you can save yourself, the more productive you will be.

6 comments:

Katie S6 said...

can we use other artists works to explain our own artist's works? Like if i wanted to go to the Museum of Fine Arts and look at other similar artists. can i do that?

R. Gallagher said...

I'll give you a terribly unsatisfying answer (I know, I'm sorry): In theory yes, but it depends--we'll discuss more when we know more about your thesis and what you are trying to prove. For instance, if you are analyzing a painting that is an allusion to another painting or painter--then the answer would be an obvious yes....but there could also be other reasons to connect works of art....

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Katie S6 said...

ok so i know we need our citation / research cards for monday, but do we need to begin writing out some of our paper also? Or when should we start writing?

Katie S6 said...

I have another question. If we find an article and it quotes Jim Dine can we use the quotes as a primary source? or is it still secondary?

R. Gallagher said...

Katie, to question # 1: just focus on the thesis for now--you are always welcome to do some preliminary writing:

the best thing you can do is more of the optics-type writing for any images that you have not written on that will appear in your paper.

#2: write down all proper citation info for it from the book...I have another mini lesson on the internal citation process of the paper, and that is one of the things I will address.

Great questions.