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Art

Research Guide to Visual Art & Design

Why Document Sources?

Document all sources that influenced your argument for your paper.

Why must you document your sources?

1.  Give credit where credit is due. 

2.  Situate the writer's (your) voice within the scholarly conversation.

3. Demonstrate competence and trustworthiness of the writer (you).

4. Courtesy to your readers

5. Avoid plagiarism.

Common Citation Styles

Chicago Manual of Style is the most common citation style for art, art history, and architecture

Chicago Manual of Style is the citation style recommended at Tyler School of Art & Architecture.


MLA Style is produced by the Modern Language Association.

MLA Style is the most common citation style for the Liberal Arts. 


APA Style is produced by the American Psychological Association.

APA Style is used most commonly in the sciences and social sciences.

Citation Generator & Organization Tools

Get in the habit of using a citation manager to help you organize and store all the sources you use for your research projects. 

Citation managers make it easy to:

  • Gather citations from databases and websites
  • Edit, organize, store, and search citations
  • Generate citations in many formats (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.)

Use any of these citation generators to quickly create citations. 

Always proof the final citations according to a style manual.