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Art - African and Diaspora Art Research Guide

Finding Books at Amherst and in the Five Colleges

Use the main search box, Discover, on the Library homepage to search for books at Amherst and across the Five Colleges. You can filter your results by format (book, ebook, etc.) or filter by library location.

Use the Place Request button to have material delivered to Frost for pickup.

Tip: Finding Exhibition Catalogs

A note on searching for exhibition catalogs:
Almost all Five College Library catalog records for exhibition catalogs contain the word "exhibitions," either as a subject term, or in the description. To find a catalog focused on a specific artist or topic, perform a keyword search that includes the artist's name (last name is often enough) or the topic word(s), and the word exhibition* (using the truncation symbol * searches for both the word exhibition and the subject term exhibitions). 

Search Tips

Search Tips

Keyword searches in the Five College Catalog will lead you to print materials. You may need to try several phrases or terms. For example, "African diaspora" or "African spirituality"  or "Yoruba language," etc.

 

Some example subject headings to search in the catalog:

Art, African

Aesthetics, African

Sculpture, African

Masks, Africa

Bronzes, African

Benin (Kingdom)

Symbolism in Art

Decorative Arts

Decoration and ornament -- Africa

Folklore

Yoruba (African people) -- Folklore.

Signs and symbols -- Africa, Sub-Saharan

Ceremonial objects -- Africa, Sub-Saharan

Arts, Black -- Nigeria -- Exhibitions [insert relevant country]

Arts and society -- Africa, West [insert relevant country]

Art and religion -- Africa, Sub-Saharan [insert relevant country or region]

Igbo (African People) [insert relevant group]

Artists--nigeria--biography [insert relevant country]

Modernism (Art) -- Nigeria

Scarification (Body marking) -- Africa

Tattooing -- Africa

Body painting -- Africa

Art, African

Art, Yoruba

Art, Nigerian

Tip: Don't forget to use the subject headings from books you've already found!

Finding Books Beyond Amherst