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Studio Art

A short description of the tools and research help available to Studio Art enthusiasts

Blogs, blogs, blogs…

Digital Collections

OAIster: union catalog of digital resources

American Memory, The Library of Congress

NYPDL Digital Gallery

California Digital Library

AHDS Visual Arts

MADID (Yale University Manuscripts & Archives Digital Images Database)

VIA (Harvard University Visual Information Access)

Bridgeman Art Library: art, culture & history images

Masters of Architecture Over 7,000 digital images of slides originally belonging to architects

Parker Library on the Web : Images of 6th-18th century manuscripts from Parker Library in Corpus Christi College, Camden.

National Galley of Art | NGA Images a repository of digital images of the collections of the National Gallery of Art

 

General Web Resources on Art

Art Library Vocabulary

Art libraries have different kinds of material than other libraries, and they have different kinds of terms to describe those materials as well.  Here are some terms to help you get started--if you click on the links, you will be taken to the Grove Art Online encyclopedias or to Wikipedia for more information.

  • Catalogue Raisonne
    A book containing every single work that a specific artist ever created. These are great for researching artists for a paper or biography.
  • Festschriften
    A collection of essays celebrating a certain person. It's not specific to art, but there are festschriften created for artists and art historians--BHA catalogs festschriften specifically.
  • Facsimile
    A copy of an existing manuscript or book that tries to be as faithful to the original as possible.
  • Iconography
    Refers to the content or subject matter of a work of art, not the form or technique of the work. For instance, a work of art may be Baroque in style, but its iconography would involve the fact that it depicts a Madonna and Child.
  • Livres d'Artiste
    Special kind of book in which an artist created the illustrations directly onto the pages.
  • Artists' Books
    Surprisingly, not the same as a livre d'artiste. An artist's book is a work of art expressed in book format. It could be made of any materials--cloth, metal, glass, etc.--and could be shaped like a traditional book, or not.
  • Exhibition Catalog
    A listing of what was on display in a specific exhibition or show. May include images. These also sometimes include essays by the curator or others that describe the show.
  • Monograph
    Sounds fancy, but it's just another name for a book, as opposed to a journal or magazine or some other continuing resource.