Guides: ARTH 200 World Art History I: Home

Getting Started

For background information, start with an exhaustive reference work such as Grove Art Online. Both the 'Guided Tour' and 'Tools and Resources' (available from the Home page) provide useful information on searching Grove/Oxford Art Online. The Oxford Companion to Western Art edited by Hugh Brigstocke is also part of Oxford Art Online.

To place art and architecture in context, consult Art and Humanities Through the Eras

Bibliographies located in books or at the end of journal articles can be very helpful. To learn if Pepperdine has access to a particular journal, search for the name of the journal in the library catalog, or use the 'Access Databases and E-Journals' search feature on the Library's Web site.

Find Articles in Databases

Art Full Text
A comprehensive, international resource covering fine, decorative and commercial art, as well as photography, folk art, film, and architecture.
Full-text articles from more than 300 periodicals dating back to 1995
High-quality indexing and abstracting of over 600 periodicals dating as far back as 1984, including 280 peer-reviewed journals
Indexing and abstracting of over 13,000 art dissertations
Indexing of nearly 200,000 art reproductions

JSTOR +ARTstor
With more than a thousand academic journals and over 1 million images, letters, and other primary sources, JSTOR is one of the world's most trusted sources for academic content. Helpful videos on using ARTstor can be found on YouTube

Academic Search Complete
Provides full text coverage to peer-reviewed titles in the social sciences, humanities, general science, multi-cultural studies, education and more.
Dissertations & Theses Global (ProQuest)
Doctoral dissertations and master's theses, from 1743 to the present. Full text for most dissertations since 1997.

History of the World in 100 Objects

The British Museum: A History of the World in 100 objects
A 100 part series by Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, exploring world history from two million years ago to the present. Objects featured in the series can be explored and their stories discovered in the Museum galleries or here on the website, by theme or gallery. You can also listen to the radio broadcasts and read their transcripts.

Online Books

Life along the Silk Road by Susan Whitfield
ISBN: 9780520960299

Publication Date: 2015-03-25

This new edition is comprehensively updated to support further understanding of themes relevant to global and comparative history and remains the only history of the Silk Road to reconstruct the route through the personal experiences of travelers. In the first 1,000 years after Christ, merchants, missionaries, monks, mendicants, and military men traveled the vast network of Central Asian tracks that became known as the Silk Road.
A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture by Rebecca M. Brown (Editor); Deborah S. Hutton (Editor)
ISBN: 1405185376

Publication Date: 2011-05-24

A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture presents a collection of 26 original essays from top scholars in the field that explore and critically examine various aspects of Asian art and architectural history. Features work on Korea and Southeast Asia, two regions often overlooked in a field that is often defined as India-China-Japan Showcases a wide range of topics including imperial commissions, ancient tombs, gardens, monastic spaces, performances, and pilgrimages.
Traditional African Art by Avner Shakarov; Lyubov Senatorova
ISBN: 9780786498741

Publication Date: 2015-06-22

The art of sub-Saharan Africa reveals the marvelous achievements of unknown artists over thousands of years. Their aesthetic ideal finds form in wood, ivory, fabric, bronze and iron.

Museum Websites

The Getty Villa
Visit the ancient world of Greece and Rome
The Getty Center
The J. Paul Getty Museum
Explore the collections of both venues: the Villa and Getty Center
Norton Simon Museum
LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
The Bowers Museum
Celebrate world cultures through their arts.

Museum Publications

Getty Publications Virtual Library
Includes titles published by the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Getty Research Institute: collection catalogues that highlight masterpieces from Getty collections, translations of texts on the visual arts, essential works of art historical research, exhibition catalogues, and journals

MetPublications
Five decades of Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art) publications on art history, available to read, download, and/or search for free.

Specialized Online Encyclopedias

Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt
Contains 600 entries covering the prehistoric, predynastic, and dynastic phases of ancient Egypt within the context of its contiguous and sometimes conquering neighbors, tracing its history through the Islamic conquest of 642 CE, with the focus on dynastic Egypt.
Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome
Overview of the major cultures of the classical Mediterranean world from the Bronze Age to the fifth century CE, plus the legacy of the classical world and its interpretation and influence in subsequentical world centuries.

Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture
Covers all aspects of Islamic art and architecture ranging from the Middle East to Africa to Central, South, and East Asia, includes entries on artists, rulers, writers, ceramics, sculpture, metalwork, painting, calligraphy, textiles, and more.

Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages
Articles on all aspects of the period from the fifth to the fifteenth century, exploring art, architecture, religion, law, science, language, philosophy, and theology, as well as cultural, religious, intellectual, social and political history. With a focus on focus on Europe and Christendom, the Encyclopedia also covers the rise of Islam and people of other cultures with whom Europeans came into contact.

Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts
Entries covering thousands of years of decorative arts production throughout western and non-western cultures including the qualities and historical uses of materials and definitions on art forms and styles.
Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques
Historical and current uses of materials and techniques in a wide range of areas from painting and sculpture to non-traditional media such as digital and video art.
Coverage includes materials in art practice (e.g. ink, enamel, digital materials); materials in conservation (e.g. adhesives); classes of artifacts (e.g. wallpaper, mosaic, ceramic); techniques and methods (e.g. book binding, gilding, printing, weaving), terms (e.g. rustication), tools (e.g. easel, laser), theory (e.g. technical examination, conservation controversies), fakes & forgeries, and conservation theorists and practitioners.