Short Bios on an Artist or Designer – Top Pick
- Oxford Art Online This link opens in a new windowthousands of authoritative and well-documented biographies of artists, architects, and designers of all eras and cultures
Search Engines
Of course you can often find short bios by entering an artist’s name in a search engine and these can work fine if you examine them carefully. In general, the biographies posted by major 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. Accuracy varies. Web bios for historic figures are frequently copied from public domain (pre-1923) sources. Wikipedia entries also vary, so check the “Talk” tab where the quality of the article may be discussed.
Less Well-Known Artists
- Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon Online This link opens in a new windowUse this if Oxford Art Online does not have the artist you seek. It’s the world's largest list of brief biographies of artists (in all media, including architecture and photography.) All eras and locations. Includes recommended readings. Scholarly. The short texts are in German but easily pasted into a web translator. See the "General Abbreviations” link to decode the many abbreviations.
Special Types of Art People
Curators, Educators, Gallerists, Critics, etc.
The most recent volumes of these are not covered in indexes and must be checked separately:
Art Writers:
- Dictionary of Art HistoriansBios and bibliography on the most famous historians of art and architecture. (Open access!)
- Key Writers on ArtHistorians and critics (e-book or book)
- Art: Key Contemporary Thinkers90 important theorists (e-book or book)