User:Jujuthebean/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.)

Archibald Motley

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I initially chose this article because it is about an artist that I have not heard about before and I was interested in learning more about him. I believe this article matters because I don't believe that Archibald Motley is widely known in today's society and having such an influence on the New Negro Movement and Chicago Black Renaissance more people should learn about his contributions and art. My first impression is that the article serves to inform the public about who Archibald Motley was and his contributions to the art world.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

Lead Section: The lead does include an introductory sentence that is clear and concise. I think the lead paragraph can do a better job of giving a brief description of the article's major sections. I question the need to explain the New Negro Movement in the Lead of this article, I feel as though that information is misplaced and would be better suited further into the article especially because it is never mentioned again. The lead also makes assumptions about Motley's struggle with racial identity without giving a source or citation. I believe the lead to be overly detailed and filled with information that does not directly relate to Motley's art or who he was.

Content: I feel like this article can use some work on keeping the article more up to date. It feels like the article scratches the surface on most topics and could use work adding more information and citations. The article does deal with one of Wikipedia's equality gaps by focusing on an artist of colour.

Tone and Balance: I feel as though the article is not very natural at all. The original author's tone comes through in many different parts of the article and offers what I interpret as their own opinions into the article. Such as, ". . . works were out of step with the school's then-conservative bent" in reference to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. There was no citation to this remark which to me implies that this is the original author's own personal view on the school during the 1910's. As well as "While he was a student, in 1913, other students at the Institute "rioted" against the modernism on display at the Armory Show (a collection of the best new modern art)." Putting the "riot"  in quotations was an odd choice. The overall article could use an overhaul in terms of tone and needs to present the facts in a neutral tone without outside opinion.

Sources/Reference: The links do work but I fond that a lot of them were just other websites or articles and not many were from the most credible sources, in my opinion. I believe there are more academic articles out there that can be refenced. Overall, there needs to be a lot more references and research done for this article. I also think the article needs more diversely written sources to reference from.

Organization/Writing Quality: The grammar is okay, not stellar. There are some poorly written lines such as, ". . .newfound appreciation of black artistic and aesthetic culture." The organization is poor, it bounces around a lot. The Family topic is so far from the Early Life topic and the Early Life references a lot of the family life. The whole article needs to be restructured honestly,

Images: The article is seriously lacking in images. There are a total of five images in the entire article which is truly poor considering the article references over five different works of art and only a few are represented. The article chooses specific paintings to talk about and has no accompanying mage for reference. There needs to be a lot more work done in terms of representing Motley's work through images.

Talk Page: The Talk Page is abysmal. The last post was in 2016. There are only four actual postings in the Talk Page and not much information is shared.

Overall: Overall this article is fine introduction to Archibald Motely but it requires serious work to truly do him justice. There is a lot to work on in this article. The one thing it does well is bring attention to Archibald Motely period. But it seriously lacks in organization, references, sources, neutrality and images. It is underdeveloped.