National Gallery of Art Assignment | Art
This essay fulfills the course requirement to conduct written research on a work of art or architecture, as seen in person. This work of art or architecture must be from the period covered in the course. Your topic does not have to be covered in the textbook, but it should be from the period of 1300 – Present. In your paper, you must provide a clear thesis and demonstrate your support for that thesis in your research.
This assignment combines the required skills necessary for investigating a work of art, and the necessity of actually seeing those objects to that research. Therefore, in this assignment, you will be required to write about a work of art you have seen in person. For area museums that you can visit, access the Sources of Museum Visit link below.
Referring to the museum catalog and/or label information (what contextualizes the important facts about the work of art), your research will expand upon one Important aspect of the work you learned from the museum.
750 – 1000 words
3 to 4 FULL pages, double-spaced and typed, in 12pt. font
Images should be submitted separately
at least 3 sources (other than your text)
Information Literacy.
You must use this Research Resource Guide (http://libguides.nvcc.edu/novaonline) to access the following credible academic sources on the basis of your research:
books
dissertations
interviews
journals
magazines
videos
Websites and encyclopedic entries will not be counted as appropriate research sources. What is provided for you through the Research Resource Guide are the required, credible, peer-reviewed sources you will need for this assignment. If you are unsure of the legitimacy of any of your sources, please ask the instructor.
Demonstrate
You must provide a clear thesis, which addresses an important aspect of the museum’s context of the work. For example, the museum text may discuss a work of art’s relation to social and political ideas within society when it was created it. If it discusses the artist’s biography, you may discuss how the work of art related directly to that biography.
Provenance is the history of ownership. In addressing provenance, you answer: Was the work commissioned and why? If not, why was it made? What were the artist’s intentions? Provenance is also an important aspect you will find in the museum’s information.
How do factors like the historical context and location shape the meaning of the work?
You must also discuss style. Remember that in discussing style, you are often referring to a period style or regional style. In order to discuss style, you must utilize formal analysis to communicate the work’s key features. Give attention to the materials and techniques the artist used to effectively communicate their ideas. Those materials and techniques are also particular to time and place.
The possibilities are endless, but you must demonstrate that you understand the existing and accepted interpretations of a work of art architecture. This essay should be thoughtfully responsive to the museum’s research you encountered in your visit, and you will be expanding upon, or even arguing against, previous research.
You must include MLA (Links to an external site.) citation style, with endnotes and a complete bibliography on two separate pages at the end of the paper. A full resource guide to MLA citation is also included in the Research Resource Guide.
Sources of Museum Visit
National Gallery of Art, nga.gov
