ART 300W Modern and Postmodern Art Class Guide

For this research assignment, you need a minimum of five sources to gather information about your artist.

The majority of your sources will come from the web or from popular publications for this assignment. Source types for this assignment include:

• art publications
• art-specific websites
• museum websites
• gallery websites
• artist's websites
• popular sources (newspapers, magazines, trade publications)
• broadcast sources

You may also find high-quality peer-reviewed articles about art in our library databases, though these may be harder to come across given the newness of your artists.

When you evaluate information, you need to do it a little differently depending on the type of resource you're looking at, but how do you know the difference between an academic resource and a popular resource.

An academic/scholarly resource:

• Is generally written by faculty members, medical doctors, and scholars for the purpose of the scholarship
• Uses technical language that is not intended to be understood by the general populace, but rather an expert in the field in which it is published
• Often will go through the peer review process, which is intended to ensure the validity of the resource:
  

A popular resource:

• Is ordinarily written by a professional journalist or writer, and is intended to be read by a general populace (rather than experts in the field)
• Written in easily understood language and cover broader topics
• Are not evaluated by experts in the field
• Lack a list of resources that were referenced by the author during the writing process

A web source:

• Is accessible directly through Google
• Can be written and published by anyone (whether they are from the government, a college or institution, or if they have no credentials at all)
• Does not go through any vetting at all, whether it be peer-review or an editor