Art 55: Web Resources

There are excellent web resources for art and art history research and study. Many national museums and libraries have online collections, so you will find other relevant resources by searching the Internet for museums in specific countries. The resources linked below were chosen specifically for excellent visual content, but include only resources in English.

Wikipedia is a great tool for a summary of a topic. Wikipedia content is constantly revised, and entries vary in quality. Some of the content is excellent, some is questionable.

Many educators frown on the use of Wikipedia. Why?

• Wikipedia content is not necessarily written by subject experts, and may be inadequate or incorrect.
• Articles in Wikipedia may be changed or deleted between viewings.
• For research papers, you need authoritative resources, so it is absolutely necessary to consult other sources.
  
• Anyone can search Google or find a Wikipedia article. To demonstrate academic skill, it is important to go beyond these basic tools.

How can you use Wikipedia in a way that benefits your research process?

• Scan the article to get general information and terms you can use as keywords for further searching.
• Scan the article for references. Sometimes these can lead you to excellent books or articles that you can find at the LCC Library or in the Summit catalog.
• Don't reference Wikipedia articles in your paper, unless you are pointing out something specific to Wikipedia.
• As you read Wikipedia articles, you may read notations that call for more evidence, or call attention to bias. These are very constructive principles that apply to your own work. What if Wikipedia editors read your work? Would they mark areas for revision?

Recommended Art Resource websites from Professor Lazo:

The sites below offer excellent images for research in art and art history and are especially good for illustrating a research paper or creating a class presentation. See the Web Resources tab for many other resources.

American Memory Project -- Created by the Library of Congress, American Memory is a gateway to rich primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States. The site offers more than 7 million digital items from more than 100 historical collections.

Art Images for College Teaching -- AICT is a personal, non-profit project of its author, art historian and visual resources curator Allan T. Kohl. AICT is intended primarily to disseminate images of art and architectural works in the public domain on a free-access, free-use basis to all levels of the educational community, as well as to the public at large. The collection focuses on ancient, medieval, and Renaissance European art and architecture.

Bridgeman Images -- Excellent image database containing images from over 8,000 collections and more than 29,000 artists, Bridgeman provides a central source of fine art and historical images for users. Based in London but focus is international in scope.

Google Art Project -- A unique collaboration of over 150 acclaimed art museums in 40 countries. The search capabilities are very clunky and it is recommended to use the Search by Museum category to browse. Create and share your own "collections."

Guggenheim: Collection Online -- "The Collection Online features a searchable database of selected artworks from the Guggenheim’s permanent collection. The site currently contains more than 1450 artworks by over 470 artists from the Guggenheim’s overall permanent collection of over 7,000 artworks."

Metropolitan Museum of Art Online Collections Outstanding online collections from the Met. Categories include: Islamic Art, Decorative Arts, American Painting & Sculpture, European Painting, the Costume Institute, Drawings & Prints, Africa, Oceania & the Americas, Egyptian Art, Musical Instruments, and others.

Visual Arts Data Service (VADS) -- A well-designed site with focus on fashion, craft, 2D design, and contemporary artists working in the UK and internationally. Repository for many specail collections in the UK.

Web Gallery of Art -- WGA is a virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture from 11th to mid-19th centuries. Content focuses on the Renaissance period, the Medieval roots of the period and its evolution to Baroque and Rococo via Mannerism. More recently Neoclassicism, Romanticism and Realism were also included.

Find an interesting website using Google or another browser? Not sure if you can use it for academic research? It is not always easy to determine if information on the World Wide Web is credible. However, the guidelines below will help you understand clues about the reliability of web resources.

 Authority      

• Who is the author of this page?
• What are their credentials?
• Are they affiliated with an institution?
• Does the site display this information?

Objectivity    

• What is the purpose of this page?
• Does the author state the goals for this site?
• Does the content inform, educate, persuade, or rant?
• If the author is affiliated with an institution (government, university, business, etc.), does this affiliation bias the information presented?

 Accuracy      

• Does the site have page sloppy layout, include misspellings or typos?
• It's always a good idea to cross-reference information no matter where you find it.
• Do graphics add or detract from the content? Is there inflammatory content?
• Is the information complete or fragmented?

 Currency      

• When was this page created?  Is there a revision/creation date?
• Do the links work?
• Is the page maintained and up-to-date?

For more in-depth information on evaluating websites, see: Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask from UC Berkeley - Teaching Library Internet Workshops