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Women Artists, Architects and Designers

This Library Research Guide is intended as a starting place for UCLA researchers, pointing to resources and strategies for finding information about women artists, architects, and designers.

How to Search the Library Catalog

To find books about the work of a single artist, architect, or designer, search the UCLA Library Catalog two ways:

  • By subject, under the name of your artist (for books that others have written about your artist)
  • By author, under the name of your artist (for catalogs of your artists' work)

Note that many artists, architects, or designers have not had an entire book written solely about them or their work; often an individual's work only appears in a group show's catalog, and many books are written about the work of several artists, architects, or designers from a particular geographic region or time period. In addition, many individuals are discussed in books about a particular style, topiccategory of people, medium, or art movement. In such cases your artists' name may not appear in the book's subject descriptors. You will need to search under broader categories.

Examples:

  • African American architects
  • Art and globalization
  • Asian American artists
  • Designers — Biography — Dictionaries
  • Graphic arts — Dictionaries
  • Painters — California — Los Angeles
  • Painting, Abstract — California — Los Angeles — Exhibitions
  • Painting, Modern — 21st century
  • Monochrome painting
  • Mixed media (Art) — Exhibitions
  • Watercolor painting, Chinese — 21st century

Searching Google Books under your artist's name can often help you identify books and exhibition catalogs that include information about your artist. You can then search the library catalog to determine whether the UCLA Library has the book in question.

Books about an artist will be classed in different parts of the library if the artist produces work in several media. The subjects 'Art' or 'Artists' are used when the work in question involves more than one media (e.g. Drawing and Painting) or a topic or movement that is not confined to a specific media. When a single media is discussed in a book, then the more specific subject term is used (e.g. Painters or Painting or Watercolor painting). In addition, please remember that the UCLA Arts Library shelves its Oversize books on different floors from its regular books.

Looking for E-Books?

Useful Subject Headings

Try searching the Library catalog using these subject headings to locate books about women artists, architects, designers, and their work. Most of these subjects can also be subdivided by country or geographic region and by time period.

Note that women artists, architects, and designers may also be discussed in books that include the work of male artists, architects, or designers, thus limiting your search to subjects with 'women' in the heading will exclude these books.

African American women artists 

Feminism and art 

Feminist art criticism. 

Jewish women artists 

Lesbian artists 

Minority women artists 

Minority women artists 

Women architects 

Women artists 

Women bookplate designers 

Women cartoonists 

Women city planners 

Women designers 

Women engravers 

Women fashion designers 

Women landscape architects 

Women painters 

Women performance artists 

Women potters 

Women sculptors