Please use this course guide as a starting point for your research.

Research Librarians are here to help you with your assignment so please contact us should you need any assistance. You can email, text us at (203) 295-7542, or schedule an individual research appointment. Additional information about library hours, citation help, etc. is located on the library home page

Starting Your Research:

Use the steps in the boxes below to refine your research topic before beginning. It will save you time!

Before you even begin your research, find your selected work of art on the Metropolitan Museum of Art website, Yale University Art Gallery website, etc. It is important to have this in front of you so that you can use your formal analysis skills and the details provided in the museum's catalog record to formulate some research topics or questions.

The Research Assignment:

Learning about the subject depicted is a good first step to help you understand what the artist is expressing.

What is something else that you are curious about? An aspect of the artwork’s historical context, especially with regard to movement (examples: war, trade, politics, from where the materials were obtained, how did it get to the museum)? function? (who would have used this artwork and how?), style? (examples: where was the medium obtained? Why did the artist make the figures abstract?)

Hint: Doing a thorough visual analysis of the art prior to this will help you generate questions. Also use details from the museum's information associated with the art to inform these questions.

You can use this guide to locate sources that will help answer your questions. 

Look at your research questions and decide what category each one falls into.

Examples:

If I want to find out information about a Greek or Egyptian mythological figure, I would probably start with the subject matter and symbolism tab, and possibly also check the historical context tab afterwards.

If I want to learn about sculpting techniques or how a piece of jewelry was made, I would look under the style and function tab first. 

Also, use your research questions to isolate and brainstorm keywords that you can use to search online sources and look up in the index of print sources.

• I will find sources that refer directly to my work of art and / or artist. Not necessarily / probably not!
• I will know what my paper thesis is when I begin researching. It's important to ask many questions about the artwork and seek answers to those questions through your research before refining your thesis.
• I will be able to find all of my sources online. While this guide does include many valuable online sources, in the past, many students have found their best information in print books.

Title: Dionysus on ship with dolphins, interior of an Attic black-figure kylix

By: Exekias

Retrieved from: JSTOR