Databases for Artist Biographical Information : Home

The Benezit Dictionary of Artists is online via Oxford Art Online. With nearly 170,000 entries on artists from antiquity to the present day, Benezit is one of the most comprehensive and definitive resources on artists in the English language. It covers artists from around the globe working in a variety of media--from painters and sculptors to calligraphers, printmakers, illustrators, installation artists, and performance artists. Benezit contains thousands of auction records, museum holdings, exhibition histories, and bibliographies. Two features in particular make Benezit unique among art reference works: its superb coverage of obscure artists and the inclusion of over 11,000 images of artists’ signatures, monograms, and stamps of sale. It can be cross-searched with Grove Art Online and other essential Oxford art titles. (Updated 3 times a year)
Available to anyone on-campus. Available off campus for UW Madison students, faculty and staff only.

This searchable encyclopedia contains the full text of the original 34-volume Dictionary of Art (1996), with ongoing revisions and updates. Articles cover all aspects of the visual arts (painting, sculpture, graphics, contemporary art forms such as performance and installation, architecture, decorative arts, and photography) from prehistory to the present. History of film-making is excluded. This resource provides access to some online images and links to other external websites containing images. (Updates vary)
Available to anyone on-campus. Available off campus for UW Madison students, faculty and staff only.

Marquis Biographies Online (Who's Who) is a collection of over 1.4 million biographies that have appeared in 25 print titles since 1985, including, among others, "Who's Who in America", "Who's Who in the World", "Who's Who in American Art", etc. The biographies contain birth and death data, educational achievements, and personal and profession histories for individuals from many fields, including government, business, entertainment, science, sports and more. (Updated daily)
Available to anyone on-campus. Available off campus for UW Madison students, faculty and staff only.

Art History Research net consists of four related and linked databases: Design Abstracts Retrospective, Review, Arts + Architecture Profiles, and Research Sources: The Poster. Design Abstracts Retrospective (DAR) is an ongoing abstracting and indexing service that aims to cover full contents of 70 of the most important design and applied arts journals published between 1900-1986. Review contains digitised full-text versions of 19th and early 20th century decorative and fine arts journals. It currently contains 28 full text journals, including: The Studio (London),vols. 1-50, 1893-1910; Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, vols. 1-27, 1897-1911; Art et Décoration, vols.1-28, 1897-1910; and The Poster, vols.1-6, 1898-1901. Arts+Architecture Profiles has biographical data on over 40,000 artists, architects, craftspeople and designers. Research Sources: The Poster contains extensive information on Poster Design, including: A History of the Poster: a Bibliographical and Online Survey; digitizations of the most of the significant books, exhibition catalogues and journals on the Poster published between 1890s-1920s; and an International Directory of Poster Collections.