Art, Architecture and Photography: Locating Exhibition Catalogs

Almost every bibliographic record for an exhibition catalog includes the subject word Exhibitions:

Renoir, Auguste, 1841-1919 -- Exhibitions
Sisley, Alfred, 1839-1899 -- Exhibitions
Caillebotte, Gustave, 1848-1894 -- Exhibitions
Impressionism (Art) -- France -- Exhibitions
Still-life painting -- 19th century -- Exhibitions

• In addition, almost every bibliographic record for an exhibition catalog has a description of the exhibition--and this description includes the searchable word exhibition:

  Published in conjunction with the exhibition held Sept. 16, 1994-Jan. 9, 1995 at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; Feb. 18-May 28, 1995 at the Art Institute of Chicago, and June 22-Sept. 10, 1995 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

  Catalog of an exhibition held at the Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, Oct. 10, 2002-Jan. 6, 2003.

• To find an exhibition catalog focused on an artist or a particular topic, perform a keyword search that includes the artist's name (last is usually sufficient) or the topic word or words and the search word exhibition? -- this truncation (symbol:  *) will search for both the descriptive word exhibition and the subject word exhibitions.

• Caveat: do not use the word exhibit (or exhibits) in your search--you might get a few results, but exhibit or exhibits is not used consistently in bibliographic records for exhibition catalogs.

• So, to find all the Renoir exhibition catalogs at Cunningham Library, perform this Fusion/Fusion Plus keyword search:

  renoir exhibition?

• To find all the exhibition catalogs on Impressionism held by Cunningham Library, perform this Fusion/Fusion Plus keyword search:

  impressionism exhibition?

• To find all the exhibition catalogs of Impressionism at Metropolitan Museum of Art held by Cunningham Library, perform this Fusion/Fusion Plus keyword search:

  impressionism metropolitan exhibition?

JSTOR

• Use this resource to locate full-text reviews or feature articles in scholarly journals.
• Coverage is limited
• All fulltext, all scholarly
• The Searching Interface is full-text searchable.

Art & Architecture Complete

• Use this database to search art periodicals.

LexisNexis Academic

• Use this resource locate the full-text of reviews or feature articles in newspapers, such as the New York Times, Washington Post, or Boston Globe.
• The coverage is extremely current.
• The searching interface recently changed significantly; here is the best way to find art reviews and feature articles
• For most searches, select the GENERAL (default) option in the red task bar (for reviews and feature articles); only use NEWS for a discovery, theft, obituary, or other newsworthy item.
• For most searches, the Easy Search option (the default) is sufficient; the Power Search option requires more complex search formatting, but also allows more powerful drilling down to specific newspapers or other sources.

Tips for formatting searches in Easy Search

• Use key terms from the title of the exhibition and the museum holding the exhibition
• "And" is always assumed between search words (renoir impressionism = renoir AND impressionism).
• Use quotation marks around phrases ("barcelona and modernity"; "metropolitan museum").
• If you know the name of the exact source you want to search, include its name in quotes in the search box ("new york times"; "washington post".
• For "Search Within", use the default "Major U.S. and World Publications".
• To see the publications searched, click on the "i".
• The default date range is two years; click the drop-down box for narrower or wider ranges.

Academic Search Premier

• Use this resource to search for full-text and/or citations for articles in a wide range of journals -- coverage can be very current. Note that numerous art journals are not included in this resource, however. Use this resource to search interdisciplinary or intradisciplinary periodicals.
• Format searches as for Fusion/Fusion Plus and WorldCat.
• In searches, put quotes around expressions such as "Museum of Modern Art" or "New York".