Art & Architectural History

A journal and blog on visual and material culture, founded by the University of Rochester School for Visual and Cultural Studies.

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

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.

Founded by Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker of the Khan Academy in 2005, "Smarthistory.org is a free, not-for-profit, multi-media web-book designed as a dynamic enhancement (or even substitute) for the traditional art history textbook." Includes essays and video courses on specific themes, time periods, artists, and artworks.

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 Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science. DPLA aims to expand this crucial realm of openly available materials, and make those riches more easily discovered and more widely usable and used. United States and world content coverage.

"The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world."

An amazing site for all things avant-garde. "UbuWeb is a completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts." Includes full length videos, interview archives, an archive of conceptual writing, a WFMU radio show, and many more gems.

Five decades of Met publications on art history, available to read, download, and search for free.

The Getty Research Portal is an online search platform providing global access to digitized art history texts in the public domain.

AAA’s collection is a dynamic, growing body of material intended to reflect contemporary artistic practice and developments of Asia within an international context. The collection includes scanned images, correspondences, artists’ personal documents, and streaming audio and video of performance art, artist talks, lectures, and other art events.