Digital Arts

Searching for Artists in OneSearch

Researching an artist or artwork will often involve looking at a variety of sources, including both academic (databases, articles, journals, etc.) and non-academic sources (commercial websites, galleries, archives, etc.). However, the duPont-Ball Library's OneSearch tool is a good place to start.

To begin, navigate to the library website. Search for the artist's name in quotation marks.

Make sure to limit results to Stetson Collections only. You can also filter results by index location (keyword, author, title, etc.) or material type (book, article, etc.).

If the artist (or artist group) has been known by more than one name, or by variations of the same name, you should conduct a search for each name (or variation). For example, the artists' group Bruce High Quality Foundation also goes by the acronym BHQF.

Searching for Art in OneSearch

When searching for a specific artwork, it's usually best to include the author's name in your search query.

For example, Edvard Munch (1863-1944) painted "Madonna" in 1894. A simple search for the title "Madonna" will likely yield hundreds of results that are irrelevant to the painting.

On the other hand, when you include the artist's name alongside the title of the artwork, you should retrieve less, more relevant results.

OneSearch is not an image search; if you are looking for images of artworks, you may want to try searching in one of the databases described in the next section of this page.

Oxford Art Online

Oxford Art Online is a database that compiles reference works related to art, artists, and art history. It includes material from both Grove Art Online and the Benezit Dictionary of Artists. It is useful for finding encyclopedic entries, biographies, images, and information about auctions and collections. It's an ideal database for discovering initial background information on a particular artist or work.

The launch page for Oxford Art Online gives you the option to browse by field, medium, era, region, place type, or artist occupation. You can do a basic keyword search using the search bar in the top left corner, or choose Advanced Search to apply filters such as format (image, article, etc.), database collection (Grove Art or Benezit Dictionary), and more.

Gale OneFile: Fine Arts

The Fine Arts collection from Gale OneFile is a scholarly research database focused on drama, music, art, and film. It contains millions of articles from over 400 full-text periodicals and journals. Gale OneFile: Fine Arts is not an images database; it is, however, useful for finding peer-reviewed articles and biographies on a given artist or work of art.

The first thing you'll see when you navigate to Gale's Fine Arts database is a basic search box. You can also conduct an Advanced Search for narrower results. The Advanced Search function will give you the option to form a more detailed search query with multiple keywords connected by Boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT).

You'll also see a few Search Tools below the search box; Topic Finder, Subject Search Guide, and Publication Search. The Topic Finder is useful for coming up with a research topic; simply enter a keyword, create a word cloud or wheel, and discover sub-topics and relevant articles from the database. The Subject Search Guide allows you to search for articles using specific subject terms found in the database's index. Publication Search is helpful for finding research from a particular journal or periodical, e.g. the British Art Journal, Women's Art Magazine, etc.

Below is a list of freely accessible online tools and databases to assist with art/artist research: