Research Guides: Fine Arts 4951: BA Thesis Seminar/Art: Databases

Open Web Sources

Artcyclopedia
The Fine Art search engine. "We have compiled a comprehensive index of every artist represented at hundreds of museum sites, image archives, and other online resources. We have started out by covering the biggest and best sites around, and have links for most well-known artists to keep you surfing for hours." Over 1200 arts sites indexed plus more than 32,000 links to an estimated 100,000 works by 7,500 renowned artists.
more...less...
A WWW site
ArtSource
"...a gathering point for networked resources on Art and Architecture. The content is diverse and includes pointers to resources around the net as well as original materials submitted by librarians, artists, and art historians, etc. This site is intended to be selective, rather than comprehensive. For help in locating specific art-related information the *BEST* source of information is your local art librarian... {from the Artsource site}.
World Wide Art Resources
"...over 89,000 works of contemporary art. Search by medium, subject matter, price and theme... research over 200,000 work by over 22,000 masters in the in depth art history section. Browse through new Art Blogs.
Writing About Art
By Marjorie Munsterberg. From the website's Introduction: "This text is intended to help students improve their ability to write about visual things. I explain the most common types of analysis used by art historians and a little bit about how these methods developed."

Art Databases

You can search for articles using databases or indexes. Many provide the full text of the article, while some databases display a link to library holdings, i.e., does the Auraria Library provide access to this article?

Art Full Text This link opens in a new window
Full text plus abstracts/indexing of international peer-reviewed journals, exhibition reviews, trade publications, yearbooks, and museum bulletins. Covers American, Latin American, Canadian, Asian. and other non-Western art. Good source of information on new artists, contemporary art, exhibition reviews, feminist criticism, advertising art, archaeology, architecture, art history, film, humanities, industrial design, landscape architecture, marketing, motion pictures, photography, pottery, and sculpture. Search Art Full Text and Art Index Retrospective at the same time.
Areas covered include advertising art, archaeology, architecture, art history, film, humanities, industrial design, landscape architecture, marketing, motion pictures, photography, pottery, sculpture and more.
ARTstor This link opens in a new window
ARTstor is a digital library that contains hundreds of thousands of high-resolution images of art, architecture, and archaeological artifacts. Each image is accompanied by descriptive information. The Auraria Library's subscription to ARTstor also offers ArchiVision (architecture) and Shared Shelf (images created and shared by campus faculty). ARTstor includes an OIV (offline image viewer). Images may be viewed and analyzed in the OIV, using features such as zooming, panning, saving groups of images online for personal or shared use, or creating presentations to be delivered either online or offline. Some functionalities of ArtStor including creating folders and using the OIV are only available on laptop or desktop computer.

ARTstor Help Topics
This links to several YouTube videos and other HELP sections that provide for help in using ARTstor.

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Full-text scholarly journals in anthropology, archaeology, ecology, history, language, literature, economics, ecology, mathematics, philosophy, political science and population studies. Coverage: Usually from the beginning of publication until 5 years before the present.
Oxford Art Online This link opens in a new window
Includes Grove Art Online (a comprehensive online encyclopedia of the visual arts including articles, biographies, and images), Oxford Companion to Western Art, Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, and Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms. Oxford Art Online contains many images of art that are not available freely online.
Art Index Retrospective This link opens in a new window
Art Index Retrospective provides peer-reviewed journal articles, yearbooks, and museum bulletins published between 1929 and 1984. An in-depth record of contemporary art history. Users can research leading English-language sources, plus others published in French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Dutch. Search Art Full Text and Art Index Retrospective at the same time.
Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals Online This link opens in a new window
Index to top-tier scholarly and professional American and international journal articles on architecture and design. Covers subjects such as the history and practice of architecture, landscape architecture, city planning, historic preservation, and interior design and decoration. Seventy-five percent of the journals indexed here are not indexed in any other source.

Historic Newspapers

NewspaperArchive This link opens in a new window
Find full-text historic archived articles in U.S. national, regional and some international newspapers.
Colorado Historic Newspapers This link opens in a new window
The Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection (CHNC) currently includes digitized pages representing individual newspaper titles published in Colorado from 1859 to 1923. Due to copyright restrictions, CHNC does not generally include newspapers published after 1923.
Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980 This link opens in a new window
Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980, is a compilation of Spanish-language newspapers printed in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries. Features hundreds of Hispanic American newspapers, including many long scattered and forgotten titles published in the 19th century.
New York Times (ProQuest Historical Newspapers) This link opens in a new window
This collection begins with the first issue of the New York Times in 1851, to four years before the current year. Find full text and full image articles, with digital reproductions of every page and every issue in PDF format. In addition to news stories, includes editorials, book, film, and theatre reviews, obituaries, birth and marriage announcements, photos, and advertisements. An additional year of coverage is added annually. Full text of the New York Times is also available from 1985 to the present in Academic OneFile; and 1987 to the present on the New York Times website. Current paper issues are housed with 1st Floor Journals.

Denver Resources: Museums & More

There are a number of local cultural institutions that could be very valuable to your research. Examples include:

History Colorado
Colorado Historical Society
Denver Public Library's (DPL) Genealogy, African American, and Western History
DPL is home to a a premier collection of print and digital materials on western and Colorado history as well as knowledgeable and helpful librarians.
Denver Art Museum
Browse and search collections at the Denver Art Museum.
Museum of Contemporary Art Denver

Contact colleagues and professors in your department, and across the globe. Listservs may be a great tool to communicate or get ideas for your research.

Your local librarian may also be a great source of information!

History & Culture - International

Oxford Bibliographies Online This link opens in a new window
Oxford Bibliographies Online (OBO) is a collection of scholarly, discipline-based subject modules supplying recommended significant sources. The Auraria Library has access to guides on Medieval Studies, Islamic Studies, Chinese Studies, Buddhism, Social Work, Military History, Linguistics, International Law, Geography, Evolutionary Biology, Ecology, Criminology, Communications, and Childhood Studies which may be searched individually or simultaneously. Results include full text and/or cited references.

Dissertations & Theses

Dissertations & Theses A&I This link opens in a new window
Bibliographic citations to doctoral dissertations and masters theses from graduate schools and universities. Indexes from 1861 onward, provides abstracts from 1980 onward, and supplies 24-page previews from 1997 until the present. Includes full-text of the University of Colorado Systems dissertations on Dissertations & Theses @ University of Colorado System. Once you have identified the dissertation or thesis of interest, use the Interlibrary Loan link to borrow a copy.