Research Guides: AFAMAST 2101/HISTART2101: African Art and Archeology: Databases & Websites

Databases & Bibliographies for Africana Studies

Africa-Wide: NiPAD This link opens in a new window
Covers all aspects of Africa, including politics, history, economics, business, mining, natural sciences, environment, development, social issues, anthropology, literature, language, law, music, tourism and much more. Compilation of three databases: South African Studies, African Studies and African Healthline.
Africa Bibliography This link opens in a new window
The Africa Bibliography is an authoritative guide to works in African studies published under the auspices of the International African Institute annually since 1984. This online consolidated version brings together every record collected since the bibliography's foundation, producing a rich and interactive resource for all scholars interested in the study of Africa.
Black Studies Center This link opens in a new window
Black Studies Center is a fully cross-searchable gateway to black studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, and reference books. It combines resources for research and teaching including The Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, Index to Black Periodicals Full Text, Black Literature Index, and the Chicago Defender historical newspaper from 1912-1975.
International Index to Black Periodicals [Selected Full Text] This link opens in a new window
IIBP includes current and retrospective bibliographic citations and abstracts from over 150 scholarly and popular journals, newspapers and newsletters from the United States, Africa and the Caribbean. Full-text coverage of 25 core Black Studies periodicals (1998 to present). Coverage is international in scope and multidisciplinary, spanning cultural, economic, historical, religious, social, and political issues of vital importance to the Black Studies discipline.
Oxford Bibliographies - African Studies This link opens in a new window
This resource offers annotated bibliographies and research guides on the subject of African studies. It contains broad introductions to such subjects as African society, politics, and literature with specific studies of individual peoples, states, and literary traditions.

Databases for Art

Art & Architecture Archive
A full-text archive of magazines comprising key research material in the fields of art and architecture, dating from the late-nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Subjects covered include fine art, decorative arts, architecture, interior design, industrial design, and photography. The magazines are scanned from cover-to-cover and presented as full-color page images; detailed indexing permits quick, efficient searching and navigation of this material.

Art & Architecture Complete This link opens in a new window
Art & Architecture Complete is the definitive research database for the study of art and architecture. This database provides full-text coverage of 380 periodicals and more than 220 books. In addition, this database offers cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for more than 780 academic journals, magazines and trade publications, as well as for over 230 books. Art & Architecture Complete also provides selective coverage for 70 additional publications and an Image Collection of over 63,000 images provided by Picture Desk and others.
Art and Architecture in Video This link opens in a new window
Art and Architecture in Video delivers over 500 hours of documentaries and interviews illustrating the theory and practice of a variety of art forms and providing the context necessary for critical analysis. Ideal for both undergraduate and graduate courses, the works within this collection offer a dynamic tool to enhance understanding of visual media.
Art Index Retrospective: 1929 - 1984 (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new window
Art Index Retrospective: 1929 - 1984 (H.W. Wilson) offers full text plus abstracts and indexing of an international array of peer-selected publications—now with expanded coverage of Latin American, Canadian, Asian and other non-Western art, new artists, contemporary art, exhibition reviews, and feminist criticism. Full-text coverage for selected periodicals is also included. In addition to articles, Art Full Text indexes reproductions of works of art that appear in indexed periodicals.
International Bibliography of Art This link opens in a new window
The International Bibliography of Art (IBA) is the definitive resource for scholarly literature on western art, and is published exclusively by ProQuest. IBA is the successor to the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA), and includes the most recent index records that were created by the Getty Research Institute as part of BHA.
JSTOR [Selected Articles in Full Text] This link opens in a new window
JSTOR offers multidisciplinary and discipline-specific collections in the humanities, sciences and social sciences. The moving wall represents the time period between the last issue available in JSTOR and the most recently published issue of a journal. It is specified by publishers in their license agreements with JSTOR, and generally ranges from 3 and 5 years. In calculating the moving wall, the current, incomplete year is not counted.

Houria Niati, The Future Speaks, c. 2008, Source: WikiArt

Further Exploration

Fowler Museum at UCLA StoryMaps
These StoryMaps, which are interactive digital exhibitions, were created to share the work being done at the Fowler Museum as part of a Mellon-funded multi-disciplinary research project on objects from Africa.

Nok sculpture, 1st Century BCE, Terra Cotta Sculpture, Source: Artstor

Reading Lists for African Art

Monographs on African Artists: An Annotated Bibliography (Smithsonian Institution Libraries) This bibliography is limited to substantive monographs and exhibition catalogs about 20th-21st century African artists. Focusing on a single artist, these texts are usually written by a scholar or critic who has conducted art historical research on the artist and/or who has gathered for publication a wide range of images of the artist's work. It also includes autobiographical writings by artists. Substantial means something more than a pamphlet, brochure, or short illustrated catalog. Excluded are publications of less than fifty pages. Also excluded are exhibition catalogs of solo exhibitions, unless they are retrospective in nature, more than fifty pages in length, and contain art historical, biographical or contextual information. The purpose of delimiting the bibliography in this way is to highlight art historical scholarship which treats in depth the life and history of individual artists. The secondary and indirect aim is to point the way to artists yet unexplored. It is startling to realize how few substantial artist's monographs there are amidst the profusion of writing on modern African art. This bibliography is supposed to extract the polished gems from the stone.
Modern African Art: A Basic Reading List (Smithsonian Institution Libraries)

Websites

Fowler Museum at UCLA Digital Collections (Africa)
National Museum of African Art Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington D.C.