Art Biographical Dictionaries

Skip Contact Info and Research Tips

Contact

Henry Pisciotta
Title: Arts and Architecture Librarian and Assistant Head

814-865-6778
Arts & Humanities Library

Oxford Art Online

Oxford Art Online (database)

Try this first. This huge electronic encyclopedia of art contains thousands of authoritative and well-documented biographies of artists, architects, and designers of all eras and cultures. Often links to illustrations.

Dictionary of Artists

Dictionary of Artists (book)

The largest (14 volumes!) list of artist's biographies in English. But few living artists.

Indexes to Biographical Dictionaries

Since there are so many biographical dictionaries too choose from, indexes have been designed to show you exactly which dictionary will contain a biography of your artist. There are 2 indexes that cover arts people.

Try them in this order:

Biography and Genealogy Master Index. (database)

Type someone’s name and get the name of a paper biographical dictionary. Then check The CAT to see if we have that particular biographical dictionary.

Artists of the World: Bio-Bibliographical Index A-Z, 1999. (book)

Contains artists, designers, architects, etc., but mostly historical – few living people. A bit trick to use because of the abbreviations but it is shelved near the Arts and Humanities Library Service Desk, where you can get help with it.

Search Engines

Of course you can often find short bios by entering an artist’s name in a search engine. In general, the biographies posted by museums, art galleries, and artists themselves, are of a higher quality than those provided by the many commercial sites such as Artcyclopedia, AskArt, Artnet, etc.

While the approaches above often work well, please don’t hesitate to ask for help with this type of search. The type of artist, nationality, era, and other factors could suggest other sources.