This is 500-word paper designed to help you practice writing a comparative analysis. Getting comfortable with this task will be important for the rest of the course: the midterm and final exam will consist in a series of short comparative essays, and the final paper is designed around a real-world practical application of this essential art historical skill.
For this short assignment, you are asked to choose two works of art from one of two online exhibitions and write a comparative essay about these two works. You may choose between two recent landmark exhibitions of Latin American art and material culture from which to draw your works: Golden Kingdoms: Luxury and Legacy in the Ancient Americas and Painted in Mexico: 1700-1790. Both exhibitions originally took place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and have been translated to an online environment here:
- https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2018/golden-kingdoms/exhibition-galleries (Links to an external site.)
- https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2018/pinxit-mexici/exhibition-gallery (Links to an external site.)
All you need to do to prepare for this assignment is go through the exhibition galleries, pick two objects (remembering Sylvan Barnet’s advice in “Writing a Comparison” on what object pairings make comparative analysis worthwhile), and look at each of them for a couple of minutes while taking notes on what you see. The objects you pick may not have been covered in lectures or readings. Resist the urge to consult interpretative materials published by the museum or any other secondary source. The point is for you to develop your own skills of art historical analysis, which will continue to pay off in future assignments (and of course, we know what published material is available and can easily recognize plagiarism).
Once you are ready to write, make sure that you include a thesis that will be substantiated by your comparative analysis. For advice on structuring your paper, you may again return to Sylvan Barnet’s “Writing a Comparison.”
Be sure to include the images and accompanying captions in your entry. Depending on the information available, image captions usually include the following: author or culture, title or identifying information, and date.
Don’t forget to proofread!
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