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The History of Cartography was published in 1987 and is made available freely in PDF format by the University of Chicago Press. This text situates the map at the heart of cultural life and explores its relationship to society, science, and religion.
The AAT is a structured vocabulary designed to improve access to information about art, architecture, and material culture. The site includes brief definitions of historic and contemporary terms and a well-structured hierarchical tree.
Reference Sources in Visual and Material Culture
If you're just getting started, try one of these academic encyclopedias.
The Grove Encyclopedia of Classical Art and Architecture spans every art form, medium, and civilization the fall of the Roman Empire, The Grove Encyclopedia of Classical Art and Architecture is a comprehensive reference source on this important field of study.
This work replaces Harold Osborne's Oxford Companion to Art (1970), which has been continuously in print for thirty years. Though originally commissioned as a new edition of Osborne's book, it is effectively a completely new work, planned and written afresh for new generations of art lovers. Apart from a handful of classic articles by Harold Osborne mainly on aesthetics, and a few others which needed only minor change, the text is entirely new. Unlike Osborne, it focuses on Western art rather than the whole of world art, concentrating primarily on painting, sculpture, and the graphic arts, leaving architecture to be covered separately.
This best-selling text has guided tens of thousands of art students through the writing process. Students are shown how to analyze pictures (drawings, paintings, photographs), sculptures and architecture, and are prepared with the tools they need to present their ideas through effective writing.
This index has been compiled as a quick reference guide to biographies of 9,052 professional and amateur artists active in Canada from the seventeenth century to the present, representing 42 professional categories, from animation to topography.
Written by 92 specialists in association with the American Folk Art Museum, the 600 cross-referenced and indexed articles, with bibliographies, included in this selection are the first comprehensive treatment of this influential art form. It includes information on bottle-cap art, canes, carousel art, scrimshaw, quilts, beadwork, and many other genres, as well as information on several visionary artists who still practice their crafts. This work has special appeal for folklorists.