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The Union List of Artist Names (ULAN)
Where possible, Artcyclopedia is now providing access to an artist's listing in the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names Online. This page has information about known variations on the artist's name, key biographical information, and a list of reference sources used.
For an example, see this entry page for Vincent van Gogh.
As of this writing, September 25, 2006, we have managed to match up approximately 80% of the 8,500-odd artists in our database with corresponding entries in the Union List.
If available, the link will be in the "Articles" section of the artist page. You can either scroll down manually, or jump directly there by clicking on the "This artist / Articles" link in the left-hand navigation column.
Why is this important?
A few reasons...
- This is an authoritative reference whose editorial guidelines are plainly laid out and whose original sources are clearly cited. That's not to say it's absolutely without error -- during the course of matching our artist list to the Getty's, I did find a handful of errors and typos and duplicate entries. But for professional or academic work, it's a better source for key information than Artcyclopedia, which draws together information from a much wider and more haphazard collection of resources.
- Each artist is assigned a unique ULAN ID, and I'm hoping I will be able to use this as a key for matching up our database with other large databases with may be published by commercial or non-commercial websites. Matching names together can be partially automated in order to save significant amounts of time, but people's names are not unique and are not standardized. Having an industry-standard unique key for each artist could allow us to make vast improvements in the breadth and accuracy and timeliness of our coverage.
- It's been proposed that a unique code such as the ULAN ID could be used to tag images published online, in order to make searching the Web for images more efficient. If this were widely adopted someday, it would mean no more searching for variations on a person's name, and no more sifting through images related to all the Michelangelos in the world who didn't happen to paint the Sistine Chapel. Here's a link to a demo site where all the information about artists and artworks is rigidly standardized into ULAN format.
Note that there is no relationship between Artcyclopedia and the Getty Research Institute. We're simply trying to provide researchers with another source of professional-quality information.
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