Subject Guides: Contemporary Art: Home

Evaluating sources

Wikipedia reliable sources
A guide to the reliability of sources.

Reference works

Grove Art Online This link opens in a new window
The foremost scholarly art encyclopedia, updated regularly and covering global art and architecture from prehistory to present day. Includes peer-reviewed articles contributed by over 7,000 scholars from around the world, accompanied by images, bibliographies, and links to additional resources.

Wikipedia
A communally-written encyclopedia. Anyone can edit or contribute an entry, at any time. Excellent for locating controversies on a topic and getting ideas for research papers. The bibliographies often point to scholarly resources. Not itself a scholarly source per se, with no authority control. Compare with Scholarpedia.

Books

Encompass Search
Encompass Search searches for books and other resources, first in our own library, and then beyond, in other research libraries.
Google Books
Many authors have placed their works in Google Books as a way to increase exposure and hopefully sell more copies of their works. Any full text that appears may not be easy to extract or manipulate, and often only snippets are available for viewing online. Use the "Find in a Library" option to "request item" on interlibrary loan (you need to be "connected to the Muhlenberg Col Libr network" to do so).

Articles/reviews from art magazines and scholarly journals

America: History & Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window
The definitive database of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. With selective indexing for 1,700 journals from 1964 to present, this database is without question the most important bibliographic reference tool for students and scholars of U.S. and Canadian history.
Full text journals include American Historical Review, American 19th Century History, American Studies, Early American Studies, Journal of American Culture, Journal of American History, Journal of Early American History, and Journal of Military History.
Art Full Text This link opens in a new window
Index and selected full text from art periodicals, 1929-present. Full text journals include Architects' Journal, Art Bulletin, and Art Journal.

Google Scholar
May be used in conjunction with interlibrary loan. Access to full text is maximized by searching from the Muhlenberg network.

Historical Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Provides indexing, abstracts, and selected full text of articles appearing in history journals, with emphasis on world history from 1450 to present (excluding the U.S. and Canada which are covered in America: History and Life). It includes citations to books, journal articles, and dissertations.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
A substantive archive of about 3,000 full text scholarly journals plus scholarly books in the arts, humanities, social sciences and biological sciences. As an archive, there is typically a lag time of 3-5 years from publication until new issues appear in JSTOR. Journals include core titles from a variety of disciplines: history, economics, biology, and more.

Articles/reviews from newspapers and popular periodicals

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
A database of both scholarly and popular publications in a wide variety of disciplines and subject areas, including psychology. Most full text is linked directly in the database; otherwise use the Check for Full Text buttons to check for full text online or in the library.
Global Newsstream This link opens in a new window
Provides full text access to current and recent archives of major daily news publications, regional, and local news resources in the US & Canada, plus over 800 more from around the globe. Publication types include newspapers, newswires, news journals, television and radio transcripts, blogs, podcasts, and digital-only websites.
New York Times Digital Archive, 1851-4 years ago This link opens in a new window
Includes full text PDF images of the New York Daily Times (1851-1857) and the New York Times (1857- 4 years ago). Index searches within1851 to 1993 using The New York Times Index.

Other primary and secondary sources (interviews, images, etc.)

Archives of American Art
From the Smithsonian: more than 20 million letters, diaries and scrapbooks of artists, dealers, and collectors; manuscripts of critics and scholars; business and financial records of museums, galleries, schools, and associations; photographs of art world figures and events; sketches and sketchbooks; rare printed material; film, audio and video recordings; and the largest collection of oral histories anywhere on the subject of art—are a vital resource to anyone interested in American culture over the past 200 years.
Google
The web can be rich source of popular (non-scholarly, non-peer-reviewed) resources in the form of blogs, news articles, and other digitized archival material such as letters, diaries, and government documents.

Citing sources

For tips on citing print and electronic sources, visit Trexler Library's Citation Guides for Print and Electronic Resources.

Or visit the Online Writing Lab at Purdue.

For automated citation, try the shareware Zotero. Directions for installing Zotero here.

For help with annotated bibliographies, visit Purdue's Online Writing Lab for definitions and format of an annotation.

Articles and books via interlibrary loan

Articles and books not found in Trexler Library can be ordered on interlibrary loan.

Potential artists for this project

Keith Haring

David Hammons

Pepón Osorio

Gran Fury/ACT-UP

Jeff Koons

Peter Halley

Farhad Moshiri

Christian Boltanski

Kara Walker

William Kentridge

Ana Mendieta

Marina Abramovic

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Shirin Neshat

Emily Jacir

Yinka Shonibare

Ai Weiwei

Cai Guo-Qiang

Xu Bing

Wangechi Mutu

Zanele Muholi

El Anatsui

Olafur Eliasson

Ernesto Neto

Catherine Opie

Contemporary Art

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