Each student will create a Museum Project for this class. You have a choice of:

1) Writing an Observational Paper

Your project will be based on your analysis of an original work of art. You can choose any paintings, sculptures, decorative objects, pieces of furniture or stained glass windows, etc. exhibited in any of the museums listed below, so long as they were created sometime between Prehistory and the Gothic period. (Since this project is designed to compare/contrast two works of art, BOTH of your selections must come from within the scope of our class. Feel free to ask me if you are unsure of your selections. Ensure you are fully identifying your artworks (by artist, title, date, medium, current location, cultural origin, dimensions, and style). If you cannot make an in-person visit to a museum, you may select works of art from a museum's online collection. Once again, the foremost requirement is that the work(s) belong to a style, movement, or time period covered in ART 101.

For the Observational Paper you must choose a work of art from one of the museums listed in "Museum Project General Description." The most important requirement is that the artwork belong to a movement covered in our class.

1) You will write a paper on one original work of art. This is not a research paper. Your observations should be illuminated by the lectures, assignments and readings. It is important to choose something that you can discuss without doing further research.

A typical paper will spend the first two pages (or more) describing the art work in detail using terms learned in class (i.e. sculpture in the round, complementary colors, iconography, symbolism, function, etc.) and possibly providing some background about the artist.

2) In the rest of the paper, you will compare/contrast your original selection to one other artwork that we have discussed in the lectures for our class, with the goal of explaining how the works are similar and/or different. This second artwork must also come from within the scope of our class, from Prehistory through the Gothic period. If you decide to do outside research you may want to talk about the work’s significance or the social/cultural context that influenced its creation. How is the work a political statement or how does it show an innovative style, for example.

3) If you do use outside sources, they must be properly credited. Please use MLA format. If you are unsure about how to cite your sources, refer to: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/. Information quoted or paraphrased, or that is not "common knowledge," without proper citations runs the risk of being misconstrued as plagiarised.

The paper should be double-spaced and composed in 12-point Arial or Times New Roman font. It must be a minimum of 800 words.