[ Home] [General Reference] [Government Documents] [Government Agencies]
Virtual Reference Desk Abstract
Union List of Artist Names (ULAN)
The first edition of ULAN, the product of a seven-year effort to merge artist and architect names and biographical data from many different collections and databases in a single reference, is a milestone in the evolution of art information. For the first time, researchers can examine variant artist names from a wide range of contemporary and historical sources, including abstracting and indexing services, visual resource collections, object collections, and scholarly documentation projects. Names are supplemented by citations to more than 27,000 sources, including biographical dictionaries, scholarly articles, and historical inventory and auction information. ULAN includes more than 200,000 names representing nearly 100,000 thousand artists and architects. Coverage matches the scope of the contributing documentation projects, consisting primarily of artists in the Western tradition from antiquity to the present. Search by both artist names and biographic information. Web access through the Getty Information Institute.