Art 318: Survey of 19th and 20th Century Arts

Whether in academic or professional life, we need to find credible sources and base our arguments on valid evidence.  When you are evaluating a source, look for clues by considering the Who, What, When, Where and Why of the source.

1. Authority - Who wrote/published it? Is the author qualified to write on the topic? What are their credentials? Is the publisher an academic institution, or a scholarly or professional organization?

2. Content - What is it about?  Is it relevant and accurate? Does the information relate to your topic or answer your research question?  Who is the intended audience?  Is the language geared toward those with knowledge of a specific discipline rather than the general public? Does the author back up their claims with evidence or opinion?  It’s ok to use sources that state opinion as long as you acknowledge it in your own work. 

3. Timeliness - When was it published?  How current are the citations in the bibliography? How current does the information need to be for your topic or assignment?

4. Source - Where did you find it?  Was it in a library database or Google Scholar?  If it’s from a website, what is the domain?  If a commercial website, who is running it and why? 

5. Purpose - Why was it written (e.g. to inform, teach, entertain, persuade)? Are there any obvious biases?

Background research

If you're having trouble coming up with keywords, try to do a little bit of background research on your topic first.  Try searching an encyclopedia to get a broad overview on your topic by searching an encyclopedia.

• Metropolitan Museum's Heilbrunn Timeline of the History of Art is a thematic, chronological, and geographical exploration of global art history through The Met collection. The Timeline currently comprises more than 1,000 essays, 8,000 works of art, 300 chronologies, and 3,700 keywords. It is regularly updated and enriched to provide new scholarship and insights on The Met collection.


• Wikipedia is another great place to start your research to get a broad over view of a topic, particularly contemporary art and artists.  Be aware that since it can be edited by anyone, not just scholars, it may contain erroneous and biased information about a topic.

Brainstorming keywords

Before you begin your search, compile a list of potential keywords related to your topic. For example, let's say you would like to find more information about art made during World War I.  You'll need to break your topic in to keywords and then brainstorm alternate keywords based on those. 

In this case, our keywords/phrases are:

• art
• World War I

You may want to do some preliminary research to refine this topic and possibly find something more specific to search for such as:

• People such as Walter Jack Duncan
• Specific artworks like Newly Arrived Troops Debarking at Brest
• Types of art like paintings, illustrations
• Subject matter like women and war

Searching phrases

To search phrases or titles with multiple words, use quotation marks. Putting these terms in quotes means that the words will be searched as a phrase rather than each word separately. For example:

• "Newly Arrived Troops Debarking at Brest"
• "combat artists"

Narrowing & broadening your search

Combine keywords using the AND operator to narrow your topic. For example:

• artists AND war

Combine keywords with synonyms using OR to broaden your search. For example:

• "World War I" OR "World War One" OR "Great War"