Research Guides: Art: Getting Started

Welcome to the Art research guide! Use this guide as a starting point for your research in this subject area.

Highlighted Resources

ARTstor
Over 2.5 million digital images; covers a wide range of cultures and time periods and includes architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, design, visual culture, and anthropological and ethnographic materials. Also includes tools to manipulate and analyze the images.

Images may be used for noncommercial, educational, and scholarly purposes by Davidson students and faculty. Please note that they may only be posted to Davidson-restricted Web sites and must not be shared with others outside the college.

Getty Vocabularies
Standardized, structured terminology for art, architecture, decorative arts, and more. Includes: The Art & Architecture Thesaurus, Cultural Objects Name Authority, Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names, and Union List of Artist Names.
Visual Resources Archive, Davidson Art Department
Includes images from the Davidson College Visual Resources Collection and Van Every/Smith Galleries Permanent Art Collection.
Login with your Davidson credentials to access the site (same as for your Davidson email).

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Images may be used for noncommercial, educational, and scholarly purposes by Davidson students, staff, and faculty. Please note that they may only be posted to Davidson-restricted Web sites and must not be shared with others outside the college.
Oxford Reference Art and Architecture Titles
Starting point for Oxford Reference titles filtered to art and architecture subject matter. Resources range from dictionary's of terms to in-depth encyclopedic entries. Great resource when needing to gain a deeper understanding of a concept, movement or technique. Entries include images and bibliographies.

Gale eBooks Reference Library
Gale eBooks is a database of encyclopedias and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research. A good source for background information. Download, print, or email as many chapters as you like. You can even send chapters to your Google or Microsoft account.
Oxford Reference
Within Oxford Reference, you may find results that range from short-entry, general reference to more in-depth articles on specialized subjects. Note: while we do not have access to all of the titles in the full collection, the default search covers the titles that Davidson owns.
ABZU Bibliography
List public domain articles, books, conference proceedings, essays, site reports, and other works related to the study of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world. Part of Etana.
Oxford Bibliographies
A collection of online, annotated bibliographies; each entry is compiled by experts in the field and provides citations to the key literature on a topic, including print and online resources. We have access to selected collections only.

The library has the following collections:
--African Studies
--Art History
--Atlantic History
--Biblical Studies
--Chinese Studies
--Cinema and Media Studies
--Classics
--Islamic Studies
--Latin American Studies
--Latino Studies
--Psychology
--Public Health
--Renaissance and Reformation

Allgemeines Künstlerexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Volker
Ed. Gunter Meissner. 75 vols. (to date). München: Saur, 1992– .
Reference Stacks N40 .A63 1992
Bénézit Dictionary of Artists
Ed. Christopher J. Murray. 14 vols. Paris: Gründ, 2006.
Reference Stacks 927 D554
Jacobsen's Biographical Index of American Artists Native to the United States or Working in the United States from 1606 to 2002
Ed. Anita Jacobsen. 4 vols. New Carrollton, TX: A.J. Publications, 2002.
Reference Stacks 927 J17j

Biography Index Retrospective 1946-1983
Biography Index Retrospective is an archive index covering notable individuals from all time periods and countries. Indexing and citations include book reviews, interviews, obituaries, diaries and memoirs.

Includes the full text of biographies from major reference works, such as The Grove Dictionary of Art, Current Biography, and The Dictionary of American Religious Biography, among others. Also includes Biography Index (1946-1983).

Search the Davidson Library Catalog to find additional reference books.

Gale eBooks Reference Library
Gale eBooks is a database of encyclopedias and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research. A good source for background information. Download, print, or email as many chapters as you like. You can even send chapters to your Google or Microsoft account.

Getty Vocabularies
Standardized, structured terminology for art, architecture, decorative arts, and more. Includes: The Art & Architecture Thesaurus, Cultural Objects Name Authority, Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names, and Union List of Artist Names.