Information about paintings, photographs, sculpture, and other works of art is usually presented in the text. If a more formal citation is needed (as in a note or a bibliography—or a separate section of a bibliography devoted to images; see also 13.67), list the name of the artist, a title (in italics) or a description, and a date of creation or completion, followed by information about the medium and the location of the work. To help readers locate the item, a museum accession number may be included; for works consulted online, add a URL.
Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory, 1931, oil on canvas, 9½ × 13 in. (24.1 × 33 cm), Museum of Modern Art, New York, object no. 162.1934, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79018.
Dorothea Lange, Black Maria, Oakland, 1957, printed 1965, gelatin silver print, 39.3 × 37 cm, Art Institute of Chicago, ref. no. 2013.1220, https://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/220174.
Rodney McMillian, Untitled (the Great Society) I, 2006, video, 15 min. 48 sec. loop, Art Institute of Chicago, ref. no. 2016.327, https://www.artic.edu/artworks/236624/untitled-the-great-society-i.
To cite a work of art included as a numbered illustration in another publication, see 14.57. To cite the text that accompanies a work of art at a museum (as on a wall), simply credit the museum in the text or in a note (e.g., “In the text accompanying Picasso’s sculpture at the Musée Picasso . . .”). Finally, note that a citation is not the same as a caption or credit. For detailed information on captioning and crediting artwork and other types of illustrations (including advice on writing alternative text), see chapter 3.
Describe the entity in the text or in a note, using as much detail as required to make your point. Then cite the source of any facts or other details that wouldn’t be considered common knowledge:
Construction of the Guangzhou Opera House, designed by Zaha Hadid, was completed in 2010 at a cost of more than $200 million.1
1. Victoria Newhouse, Site and Sound: The Architecture and Acoustics of New Opera Houses and Concert Halls (New York: Monacelli Press, 2012), 194.
If you need a list—for example, of buildings designed by a particular firm or belonging to a certain style or otherwise sharing common features that are relevant to your reason for writing about them—then create one. Listing under the name of the architect or firm would be one approach:
Zaha Hadid Architects. Guangzhou Opera House. Guangzhou, China. Completed in 2010.
Add other details as relevant to your study, and otherwise adjust as needed. But make this a separate list; don’t hide such info in a bibliography, where readers are apt to miss it among books and other cited documents.
Last Name, First Name, or Firm. Title/Project. Location. Completion or Duration.
Last name, first name of Author. Title of drawing. Date. Materials of composition. Collection or Institution name, Location. (If the drawing is found online or in a book, click on the examples below to see how to customize the citation.)
Last name, first name of Creator or Name of Organization. Title of blueprint, Date of creation, Collection name. Name of archive/library.
Information about maps is usually presented in the text. If a more formal citation is needed (as in a note or, rarely, a bibliography), list the cartographer (if known) and the title of the map (in italics) or a description (in Roman), followed by the scale and size (if known) and publication details or location of the map. Undated maps consulted online should include an access or revision date.
Samuel de Champlain, cartographer, Carte geographique de la Nouvelle Franse, 1612, 43 × 76 cm, in The History of Cartography, vol. 3, Cartography in the European Renaissance (University of Chicago Press, 2007), fig. 51.3.
Yu ji tu [Map of the tracks of Yu], AD 1136, Forest of Stone Steles Museum, Xi’an, China, stone rubbing, 1933?, 84 × 82 cm, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/gm71005080/.
US Geological Survey. California: Yosemite Quadrangle. 1909; repr., 1951. 30-minute series quadrangle, 1:125,000 scale. National Map, Historic Topographic Map Collection. https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/scan-1909-usgs-quadrangle-yosemite-california-area-include-el-capitan-usgs-historic.
See also 14.57.
The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) Seventeenth Edition is the authoritative reference work for authors, editors, proofreaders, indexers, copywriters, designers, and publishers. In 1903, the University of Chicago Press editors and compositors created a formatted style guide to bring a common set of rules to the process of editing university professors' manuscripts.
The footnote system is preferred by many working in the humanities—including literature, history, and the arts. In this system, sources are cited in numbered footnotes or endnotes. Each note corresponds to a superscripted number in the text. Sources are also usually listed in a separate bibliography.
For more information on using and understanding the Chicago Manual of Style, check out PurdueOWL’s section on Chicago Manual of Style (Footnotes and Bibliography), or the resources provided by the Chicago Manual of Styles, which Cooper Union students, faculty, and staff have full access.
Notes:
1. Zadie Smith, Swing Time (New York: Penguin Press, 2016), 315–16.
2. Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman, A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 12.
Shortened notes:
3. Smith, Swing Time, 320.
In the bibliography, entries are ordered alphabetically:
Grazer, Brian, and Charles Fishman. A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015.
Smith, Zadie. Swing Time. New York: Penguin Press, 2016.
The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) Seventeenth Edition is the authoritative reference work for authors, editors, proofreaders, indexers, copywriters, designers, and publishers. In 1903, the University of Chicago Press editors and compositors created a formatted style guide to bring a common set of rules to the process of editing university professors' manuscripts.
The author-date system is preferred in the sciences and social sciences. In this system, sources are briefly cited in the text, usually in parentheses, by author’s last name and year of publication. Each in-text citation matches up with an entry in a reference list, where full bibliographic information is provided.
For more information on using and understanding the Chicago Manual of Style, check out PurdueOWL’s section on Chicago Manual of Style (Author-Date), or the resources provided by the Chicago Manual of Style, which Cooper Union students, faculty, and staff have full access.
In-Text Citations follow the immediate uses of the source and is followed by a period:
(Grazer and Fishman 2015, 12)
(Smith 2016, 315–16)
Grazer, Brian, and Charles Fishman. 2015. A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Smith, Zadie. Swing Time. New York: Penguin Press, 2016.
The Modern Language Association of America (MLA) Style specifies guidelines for formatting manuscripts and citing research in writing. MLA Style also provides writers with a system for referencing their sources through parenthetical citations in their essays and Works Cited pages. The MLA Handbook is available for reference in the Cooper Union Library!
Basic Format:
(Author Last Name Page Number)
Examples:
(Latartara 97-8)
Article/Journal:
Author Last Name, First Name. "Article Title." Journal Title, volume, issue/number, year, pages. https://doi.org/[doi].
Examples:
Latartara, John. "The Timbre of Thai Classical Singing." Asian Music, vol. 43, no. 2, 2012, pp. 88-114. https://doi.org/10.1353/amu.2012.0013
Books:
Author Last Name, First Name. Title. Edition. Place: Publisher, Date.
Examples:
Anderson, Laurie. United States. 1st ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1984.
