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Art History & Appreciation: Art Selection (Heilbrunn & SmartHistory)

This guide is designed to assist you in finding information on artists and/or the field of art/art history

HEILBRUNN TIMELINE

Some assignments may require you to select works of art from different times or cultures from the Heilbrunn Timeline from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We recommend starting from the "Works of Art" link. You can browse here by time period, region, or theme:

Local Museums

1. Visit the website of the museums you visited or where the art is located. See if anything is written about your piece. 

2. Look around their site for more description about the style or time period in which your piece(s) were made. 

3. Visit other museum or gallery sites (Google search artist name + "site:.org" or "site:.edu" for most museums, or just the word museum) where your artist has work displayed. Repeat step 2.

 

Object Research Additional Sources

Use the websites below to find similar works and descriptive text about the artistic and cultural/historical context of works.

Citation Examples

The most common citation styles used in art research are MLA and Chicago styles. Below are some examples of how to cite pages from the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History and Smarthistory.org. For more information on citation styles, including how to cite other formats, see our Citation Basics Research Guide.
chart showing citation examples for Smarthistory and Heilbrunn TImeline

Note: There are usually pre-made citations at the bottom of both Smart History and Heilbrunn essay pages, but they are not 100% accurate. (Citation styles change over time and many of these pre-made citations have not been updated.) Be sure to check your citation against the current formatting guidelines.

The above examples refer only to citations for Works Cited/Bibliography pages. For help with in-text citations, use the links below.

Chicago Style In-Text Citations (look at examples listed under "Notes" and/or "Shortened "Notes.")

MLA In-Text Citations