Art & Architectural History

Apart of the Oxford Reference editions, this work offers over 1,600 up-to-date entries on Islamic art and architecture ranging from the Middle East to Central and South Asia, Africa, and Europe and spans over a thousand years of history.

This Encyclopedia is the most current and comprehensive reference resource for the visual arts of the Classical period. It draws upon the unparalleled scholarship in The Dictionary of Art (1996), and adds dozens of newly commissioned entries on recent archaeological discoveries, fully updated bibliography, and over 600 illustrations.

The Grove Encyclopedia of Medieval Art and Architecture offers unparalleled coverage of all aspects of art and architecture from Medieval Western Europe, from the 6th century to the early 16th century

This encyclopedia offers the most current and comprehensive scholarly information on the visual arts of the Renaissance in Northern Europe.

This encyclopedia covers Western and Non-Western decorative arts including artists, material types, definitions of forms and styles, the history of textiles, ceramics, jewelry, and many more. A great source to find applicable bibliographies on over over 3,000 topics.

A comprehensive encyclopedia on animal lore of the Middle Ages, including rare and hard to find materials. Browse an alphabetical list of "beasts," manuscripts by country, and Institutions with Bestiary holdings.

Contains sixty-six alphabetically arranged entries that profile African-American artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and briefly describes the lives and accomplishments of Ghada Amer, Norman Lewis, Hale Woodruff, and others.

An encyclopedia developed by the Society of Architectural Historians. This is a free, open-access site containing select entries for around 100 buildings from each state represented in the full SAH Archipedia.

This reference work provides fascinating historical and current uses of materials and techniques in a wide range of areas from painting and sculpture to non-traditional media such as digital and video art. Coverage includes materials in art practice (e.g. ink, enamel, digital materials); materials in conservation (e.g. adhesives); classes of artifacts (e.g. wallpaper, mosaic, ceramic); techniques and methods (e.g. book binding, gilding, printing, weaving), terms (e.g. rustication), tools (e.g. easel, laser), theory (e.g. technical examination, conservation controversies), fakes & forgeries, and conservation theorists and practitioners

Encyclopedia which covers surrealism in art, cinema and literature.

The Getty Vocabularies are considered one of the international standards for Art Terminology. They include: The Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), The Cultural Objects Name Authority (CONA), The Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN), The Union List of Artist Names (ULAN). Look here for the correct name and a short bio of a material, a museum, an artist, or an art movement.

An online database with information on over 200,000 artists. This is a good ready reference tool with artists' biographies, auctions records and prices, affiliated museum and gallery information, and literature references.

By the Metropolitan Museum of Art: "The Timeline is a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of the history of art from around the world, as illustrated by the Museum's collection. It is an invaluable reference and research tool for students, educators, scholars, and anyone interested in the study of art history and related subjects." This site is an excellent visual overview of the linear and geographic history of art.

A collaboration between Columbia University and Vassar College: "Mapping Gothic France builds upon a theoretical framework derived from the work of Henri Lefèbvre (The Production of Space) that seeks to establish linkages between the architectural space of individual buildings, geo-political space, and the social space resulting from the interaction (collaboration and conflict) between multiple agents -- builders and users." This is an excellent digital humanities mash-up site.

"The Internet Archive Text Archive contains a wide range of fiction, popular books, children's books, historical texts and academic books."

A comprehensive index to academic, scholarly websites in Art History. The full Voice of the Shuttle website has separate pages for all humanities disciplines. (University of Santa Barbara)