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Art and Design

A guide for locating resources relevant to assignments in art, design, and art history classes.

MLA Citation Resources

Citing Artworks in MLA

From the Purdue OWL MLA Formatting & Style Guide:

A Painting, Sculpture, or Photograph

"Provide the artist's name, the title of the artwork in italics, and the date of composition. Finally, provide the name of the institution that houses the artwork followed by the location of the institution (if the location is not listed in the name of the institution, e.g. The Art Institute of Chicago).

Goya, Francisco. The Family of Charles IV. 1800, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

If the medium and/or materials (e.g., oil on canvas) are important to the reference, you can include this information at the end of the entry. However, it is not required.

For photographic reproductions of artwork (e.g. images of artwork in a book), treat the book or website as a container. Remember that for a second container, the title is listed first, before the contributors. Cite the bibliographic information as above followed by the information for the source in which the photograph appears, including page or reference numbers (plate, figure, etc.).

Goya, Francisco. The Family of Charles IV. 1800, Museo del Prado, Madrid. Gardener's Art Through the Ages, 10th ed., by Richard G. Tansey and Fred S. Kleiner, Harcourt Brace, p. 939.

If you viewed the artwork on the museum's website, treat the name of the website as the container and include the website's publisher and the URL at the end of the citation. Omit publisher information if it is the same as the name of the website. Note the period after the date below, rather than the comma: this is because the date refers to the painting's original creation, rather than to its publication on the website. Thus, MLA format considers it an "optional element."

Goya, Francisco. The Family of Charles IV. 1800. Museo del Prado, museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-family-of-carlos-iv/f47898fc-aa1c-48f6-a779-71759e417e74."

Citing Book and Articles in MLA

Basic MLA format for a book:

Last Name, First Name. Title of Book. City of Publication, Publisher, Publication Date.

Basic MLA Format for Scholarly Articles:

Author(s). "Title of Article." Title of Journal, Volume, Issue, Year, pages.

Most articles found in library databases will be scholarly articles that should be cited in this format. If you find articles elsewhere, or aren't sure what kind of article you have, check the "MLA Citations for Periodicals" link above to help identify what you have.

 

Chicago Manual of Style Citation Resources

Citing Artworks in CMoS

From the Purdue OWL CMoS site:

VISUAL ARTS

This entry can be applied to paintings, sculptures, and all forms of visual art. (Music and other performing arts are covered under LINK:“Audiovisual Recordings and Other Multimedia.”) As usual, these must be cited with title, creator, and date as available, but the nature of these sources requires that you also provide medium, dimensions, and physical location, as follows:

N:

3. Firstname Lastname, Title, date, medium, height × width × depth (unit conversion), location.

B:

Lastname, Firstname. Title. Date. Medium, height × width × depth (unit conversion). Location.

 

...If images of the piece are available online, you should provide a URL at the end of your citation... 

N:

4. Caspar David Friedrich, Der Mönch am Meer, 1808–10, oil on canvas, 110 cm × 171.5 cm (43 in × 67.5 in), Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany, https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/KwEv_TMiJhn5kA.

B:

Friedrich, Caspar David. Der Mönch am Meer. 1808-10. Oil on canvas, 110 cm × 171.5 cm (43 in × 67.5 in). Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany. https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/KwEv_TMiJhn5kA.

Citing Books and Articles in CMoS

Basic CMoS format for Books:

FOOTNOTE OR ENDNOTE (N):

1. First name Last name, Title of Book (Place of publication: Publisher, Year of publication), page number.

CORRESPONDING BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ENTRY (B):

Last name, First name. Title of Book. Place of publication: Publisher, Year of publication.

BOOK BY ONE AUTHOR 

N:

1.  Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums (New York: Viking Press, 1958), 128.  

B:

Kerouac, Jack. The Dharma Bums. New York: Viking Press, 1958.

Basic CMoS Format for Periodicals

"Notes and bibliographic entries for a journal include the following: full name of the author(s), article title, journal title, and issue information. Issue information refers to volume, issue number, month, year, and page number(s). For online works, retrieval information and the date of access are also included.

N:

1. Susan Peck MacDonald, “The Erasure of Language,” College Composition and Communication 58, no. 4 (2007): 619.

B:

MacDonald, Susan Peck. “The Erasure of Language.” College Composition and Communication 58, no. 4 (2007): 585-625.

Citation Tools

It is a good idea to use a citation tool to help you with your citations. You can use either a citation generator or a citation management tool. Citation generators are great for quick projects like short papers with just a few resources. However, you should always check generated citations for errors (tip: there are almost always errors, especially with capitalization and use of italics).

A good citation generator is Zbib. Watch this quick tutorial video about how to use it.

For large projects like research papers or capstone projects, you should use a citation management tool. A good, free citation management tool is Zotero. More information can be found in this Zotero guide.