How to write an art history paper with Dartabase

The scenario

You are writing a seminar paper on Jean-Michel Basquiat for an upper-level art history course. Your instructor requires a bibliography with at least five specific works, each with a correctly formatted Chicago citation and a note on where the work is currently held. You have two hours before the draft is due.

Here is how to do the research part in under ten minutes, so the time goes toward writing.

Step 1: search for the artist

Go to Dartabase search and type "Basquiat." The results panel separates artists from artworks. Click the artist name to open the artist page, which lists every Basquiat work in the catalogue with thumbnails, dates, and holding institutions. You can also switch to Timeline view to see the works grouped by decade.

Basquiat's holdings in Dartabase come from the Whitney Museum of American Art's open-access dataset, so every record links back to the Whitney's own catalogue entry.

Step 2: open a work and read the metadata

Click a work to open the detail page. Take "LNAPRK" (1982) as an example. The detail page shows:

• Medium: acrylic, oil, oil stick, and marker on found paper on canvas and wood, with rope
• Date: 1982
• Current location: Whitney Museum of American Art
• Source: Whitney open-access dataset (linked)
• Credit line and rights information where published

All of this comes directly from the Whitney's own records. Dartabase does not infer or supplement: what you see is what the source institution has published. The "View source record" link at the bottom of every page takes you to the museum's own catalogue entry so you can verify.

Step 3: copy the citation

On the detail page, scroll to the citation panel. Select Chicago style. The formatted citation appears immediately. Press C or click "Copy" to copy it to the clipboard. Your chosen style is remembered across pages, so if you are working in MLA or APA you only need to set it once per session.

For "LNAPRK" the Chicago citation looks like this:

BibTeX and RIS downloads are also available if you are managing your bibliography in Zotero, Mendeley, or a similar tool. Dartabase embeds Dublin Core and COinS metadata in every page, so Zotero's browser button can import the record automatically without copy-pasting.

Step 4: check the exhibition history

Below the metadata on each artwork page, the exhibition history section lists every documented showing of the work: institution, dates, and exhibition title. For Basquiat works held by the Whitney, this includes institutional surveys and solo retrospectives that document the critical reception of each piece over time.

If your paper argues that a work's significance was established by early institutional validation, the exhibition history gives you the primary evidence for that claim. You can cite the exhibition entry directly rather than relying on a secondary source that describes it.

Step 5: build the bibliography

Use the lightbox (press A on any artwork page, or click the checkbox on a card) to collect works as you browse. Once you have five, press L to open the lightbox. The Chicago bibliography for your selection is pre-formatted and ready to copy.

Alternatively, the Browse page has an Export button that downloads your current filtered set as CSV or JSON if you need the raw metadata for a larger project.

The result

Five correctly formatted Chicago citations, each traceable to the Whitney's published catalogue, with exhibition history notes you can use as primary evidence in your argument. Total research time: under ten minutes. The rest of the two hours goes toward writing.

Every Dartabase citation includes a stable URL pointing to the record. These URLs are permanent: even if internal IDs change, the stable cite URL always resolves. Your instructor can click through and verify the source.