Research Guides: African American Studies: African American Art

Databases for Researching African American Art

There is plenty of information on African American art and artists available in databases described elsewhere in this guide. Finding information on lesser-known artists will require additional research.

DELCAT Discovery
Online catalog of the University of Delaware Library
Art Abstracts/Art Index Retrospective
Indexing, abstracts and citations for hundreds of periodicals on art, art history and related disciplines. (Coverage: Abstracts, 1984 --, Indexes, 1929-1984)
Subjects include art history and criticism, architecture and architectural history, archaeology, antiques, museum studies, graphic arts, industrial design, landscape architecture, interior design, folk art, painting, photography, pottery, sculpture, decorative arts, costume design, television and video, motion pictures, advertising art, non-western art, textiles, and related fields.
Black Studies Center
Resources for researching the past, present, and future of African Americans, the wider African Diaspora, and Africa itself. Comprised of several cross-searchable component databases.
Academic OneFile
A premier source for peer-reviewed, full-text articles from scholarly journals and other authoritative sources. Also includes thousands of podcasts and transcripts from NPR and CNN, as well as videos from BBC Worldwide Learning. (Coverage: 1980 --)
Gale in Context: Biography
Biographical information on historically significant figures and present-day newsmakers from around the world and across all disciplines and subject areas.
Biography Reference Bank
Contains biographies, obituaries, and photographs. Many of the biographies are enhanced with full text, abstracts, and citations. Biographical subjects represent all fields and nationalities. (Coverage: antiquity --)

Newspaper Articles

Newspapers are excellent sources of information on artists and their work. These sources can help you locate information on artists and exhibitions as reported by the local media and can help you learn of museums that hold a particular artist's work.

Ethnic NewsWatch
Full-text newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic and minority press, providing access to often overlooked perspectives. Includes unique community publications not found in any other database, as well as top scholarly journals on ethnicities and ethnic studies. Nearly a quarter of the articles are presented in Spanish. Dozens of major Latino publications are featured, (Coverage: 1959 --)
The database also contains Ethnic NewsWatch: A History, which provides historical coverage of Native American, African American, and Hispanic American periodicals.

Ethnic NewsWatch™ comprehensively covers these ethnic categories:
- African American/Caribbean/African
- Arab/Middle Eastern
- Asian/Pacific Islander
- European/Eastern European
- Hispanic
- Jewish
- Native People
Global Newsstream
Recent global news content, as well as archives. Content from newspapers, newswires and news sites in full-text format. Provides large collections of news from the U.S., Canada, Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America and Australia. (Coverage: 1980 --)
Nexis Uni
Full-text information from news, business, and legal sources, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790. Though not required, you have the option to create a personal account that will give you access to special features such as alerts, saved searches, folders, history, annotations and more.
Vendor Lyrasis. Publisher LexisNexis.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers (Black Newspapers)
Primary source content essential to the study of American history and African-American culture, history, politics, and the arts. Each newspaper provides access to perspectives and information that was excluded or marginalized in mainstream sources. (Coverage: late-19th to mid-21st centuries)
Titles included:
- The Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988)
  The most widely circulated black newspaper on the Atlantic coast. It was the first Black newspaper to have correspondents reporting on World War II, foreign correspondents, and female sports correspondents.
- Chicago Defender (1910-2010)
  A leading African-American newspaper, with more than two-thirds of its readership outside Chicago.
- Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005)
  The oldest and largest Black newspaper in the western United States and the largest African American owned newspaper in the U.S.
- New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993)
  The leading Black newspaper of the 20th century reached its peak in the 1940s. The Amsterdam News was a strong advocate for the desegregation of the U.S. military during World War II, and also covered the historically important Harlem Renaissance.
- Norfolk Journal and Guide (1916-2003)
  As a southern black newspaper, the Norfolk Journal and Guide did not have the same freedoms as northern black newspapers and thus did not aggressively or openly denounce social and racial injustices. Because of its more moderate position the Guide was able to procure advertisements from nationally owned white businesses. It was also the only black newspaper that provided on-the-scene, day-to-day coverage of the Scottsboro trial in the 1930s.
- The Philadelphia Tribune (1912-2001)
  The oldest continuously published Black newspaper, is dedicated to the needs and concerns of the fourth largest black community in the U.S. During the 1930s the paper supported the growth of the United Way, rallied against the riots in Chester, PA, and continuously fought against segregation.
- Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2010)
  One of the most nationally circulated Black newspapers, the Pittsburgh Courier reached its peak in the 1930s. A conservative voice in the African-American community, the Pittsburgh Courier challenged the misrepresentation of African Americans in the national media and advocated social reforms to advance the cause of civil rights.

Other Databases for African American Art Research

Artstor Digital Library (MOVED TO JSTOR 8/1/2024)
Includes several notable art collections such as the UD Paul R. Jones Collection. See African American Studies in Artstor for information on individual collections.
Oxford Art Online
Gateway to Oxford’s art reference works, including the regularly updated Grove® Dictionary of Art and the Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Includes articles that span ancient to contemporary art and architecture, as well as images of works of art, structures, plans and artist signatures.
Subscription is for 3 simultaneous users.
America: History and Life
Index of scholarly literature covering the history and culture of the U.S. and Canada, from prehistory to the present.
Provides indexing of academic journals dating back to 1954, with some coverage for titles back to the early 20th century.
Black Thought and Culture: African Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
Monographs, essays, articles, speeches, and interviews written by leaders within the black community from the earliest times to the present.
Black Thought and Culture is made available through a grant from the Unidel Foundation.
HistoryMakers Digital Archive
An extensive collection of full-text and video interviews with African-Americans distinguished in the fields of science, culture, politics, the arts, and public life.
The site works best in modern browsers like Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Firefox. It will not work in Internet Explorer.
Periodicals Index Online
An index to the contents of journals and magazines in the humanities and social sciences, from their first issues through 1995, with links to the full-text of some articles. (Coverage: 1665-1995)

Internet Resources for African American Art

African-American Artists | Art Cyclopedia
Black American Artists | Ask Art
David C. Driskell Center | University of Maryland
Getty Images
Includes archive of Ebony and Jet magazines.
Howard University Gallery of Art
Index of African American Artists | Metropolitan Museum of Art
National Museum of African American History and Culture | Smithsonian
The Studio Museum in Harlem

Umbra Search - African American History
A digital library that aggregates materials documenting African American history and cultural life from archives, libraries, museums, and other U.S. repositories. It features photographs, manuscripts, documents, books, sound files, video files, and other freely available resources.
Umbra Search is also a widget that can be embedded in any digital environment, allowing users to access Umbra Search from other sites. Widget instructions can be found on the Umbra Search website.