Project Overview
This research guide supports a project in FF161, Drawing: Tradition & Innovation in which students:
Resources for the project
How to Discover a Tradition
Artsy.net is a highly visual website that is useful for browsing multiple artists and artworks from many time periods. It includes the Art Genome Project, which maps characteristics (called “genes”) common to art makers and to art and design works over time.
Browse all categories here. Here are some selected categories:
Google Arts and Culture presents gigapixel versions of artworks from many times and places.
One can browse by media, movement, place, and more.
Three Noblemen and a Dog (late 18th century). India, Rajasthan, Jaipur.
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery; view on Google Arts & Culture.
How to Research a Tradition
1. Search the Library Catalog for books to explore your subject.
2. Remember that eBooks can be read online!
3. Investigate your book and write down keywords pertaining to your subject, searching in Wikipedia or Grove Art Online.
4. Watch this short video on how to find images for your presentation. Register as a user in ARTstor by using this link on our A-Z Database page (libguides.mica.edu/artstor). Find & download images for your presentation.
5. Document your text and image sources.
6. How did you do? Contact us at the Library for help with your research. Email: refer@mica.edu
Use the Decker Library catalog to find:
Search for Subjects in the Decker Library Catalog
ADVANCED SEARCH - choose "contains: subject"
Sample searches:
Some Examples from Library Collections
The Artist Project: What Artists See When They Look At Art by 
An Atlas of Drawings: Transforming Chronologies by 
Creative Copies: Interpretative Drawings from Michelangelo to Picasso by 
Drawing from the Modern by 
Drawing Futures: Speculations in Contemporary Drawing for Art & Architecture by 
Drawing in All Its Forms: Intenzione, Manifesta by 
Drawing Now: Eight Propositions by 
Inventing Faces: Rhetorics of Portraiture Between Renaissance and Modernism by 
George Baselitz - Visit from Hokusai by 
Iona Rozeal Brown by 
Isamu Noguchi/Qi Baishi/Beijing 1930 by 
Joseph Beuys: Drawings After the Codices Madrid of Leonardo da Vinci by 
Lines from an Artistic Life: The Drawings of Adimoolam by 
Neo Japanesque Graphics by 
Art forms in nature. Kunstformen der Natur. by 
A Brush with Animals: Japanese paintings, 1700-1950 by 
Cryptozoology by 
The Golden Age of Botanical Art by 
Kristof Kintera: Post-Naturalia by 
Nature Mandalas Wonders of the Garden by 
Sophia Crownfield Textile Design Collection, 1890-1925
Animal Kingdom: Stereoscopic Images of Natural History by 
Design Play: An Array of Quirky Design by 
Direction of the Road by 
Masters of Deception: Escher, Dalí & the Artists of Optical Illusion by 
Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art Since the 1960s by 
Page from Codex Espangliensis: From Columbus to the Border Patrol by Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Enrique Chagoya, and Felicia Rice
N7433.4 .G68 C64 1998 Special Collections - Access by request at Research Help Desk
Codex Zouche-Nuttall (facsimile) by 
An Elegant Hand: The Golden Age of American Penmanship and Calligraphy by 
One Long Black Sentence by 
S.C. Malone Penmanship Collection, 1890-1932
Their Way of Writing: Scripts, Signs, and Pictographies in Pre-Columbian America by 
Peter Apian, Astronomicum Caesareum (facsimile) (Ingolstadt, 1540)
QB41 .A6 Special Collections.
Access by request at Research Help Desk
Celestial Treasury: From the Music of the Spheres to the Conquest of Space by 
Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time by 
Nights, the Cosmos, and I by 
Observing by Hand: Sketching the Nebulae in the Nineteenth Century by 
Picturing Heaven In Early China by Special Collections at the Decker Library
Animated GIF made from Animal Locomotion (1872-1885) by Eadweard Muybridge
TR140 .M79 A48 1887 Special Collections. Access by request at Research Help Desk.
Browse or search the Book Arts Catalog for over 800 artists' books in our collection.
Follow Decker Library Tumblr for selections from the Library's special collections.
All materials are available to view in the Library by request at the Research Help Desk.
