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How to Create a Figure List

When you discuss a work of art extensively in your essay, be sure to provide an image of that artwork at the end of the essay in a Figure List, much as you would list books cited in the essay in a Bibliography or Works Cited. The image and caption should take up the full page to allow the reader to make out the details discussed in the essay. Each image should be labeled according to the order of its appearance in the essay, i.e. the first artwork mentioned becomes (Fig. 1), the second becomes (Fig. 2). On a new page at the end of the essay titled Figure List include the image, figure number and caption information as you see here:

For the purposes of this handout, this image & caption do not take up the full page, but in your essay they should. This is why using highres images is so important

Fig. 1 - Charles Bird King (American, 1785 - 1862). The Vanity of the Artist's Dream, 1830. Oil and graphite on canvas; 89.22 x 74.93 cm. Cambridge: Harvard Art Museum, 1942.193.

In the caption, always be sure to include: Artist name (Nationality, life dates). Title, Date. Medium; dimensions. Collection City: Institution, Object Number/Accession Number. If the information isnt easily available to you, then

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ask me for further guidance. Dont forget that the Unit prompts and museum websites contain much of this information. The caption generally appears below the image and both are centered on the page. The preference for dimensions is for centimeters. You need not convert feet/inches to centimeters, but any metric measurement (millimeters/meters) should be converted to centimeters. Accurate dimensions can be found most easily via the museum websites collection database. Museum websites are the best sources for images. If one of your images appears on the course website in the slide viewer, double click on that image to access a high-res version. If the name of the collection city is in the name of the institution you need not repeat it, i.e. you can just write Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, not Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. On first mention in your essay, give the title of the artwork and then its figure number in parentheses to direct the reader to the end of the essay, i.e. Whistlers Nocturne in Blue and Silver (Fig. 2) continues in a tradition established by Monet in his View of the Sea at Sunset (Fig. 3). If there is a possibility for confusion later on about which work is being discussed (two works with similar names for example), then you can continue to insert figure numbers as necessary.

How to Cite a Museum Label

For the citation of label text, since museum labels don't generally include curator name, please include: Label text. Artwork title, date. Artist. Exhibition title (if special exhibition), date, Museum, Location. For example: Label text. The Vanity of the Artists Dream, 1830. Charles Bird King. ReView, 2010, Harvard Art Museum, Cambridge, MA. In MLA, youd cite the label parenthetically (Label text) and then include it in the Bibliography at the end. The more elegant solution and more frequent one in art history papers is to use Chicago-style citations and thus cite the label text via a footnote.1

Label text. The Vanity of the Artists Dream, 1830. Charles Bird King. Re-View, 2013, Harvard Art Museum, Cambridge, MA.