Although there are many dictionaries of art online and in print, dictionaries of art historians of Western art history are harder to come by. Visitors interested in the lives of art historians will be delighted with Duke University's free online database of historic scholars, museum professionals, and academic historians of art. Duke's Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies' created this database as a "biographical and methodological database intended as a beginning point to learning the background of major art historians of western art history." Visitors will find that the "Explanation" link found on the menu across the top of the page, tells when the Dictionary of Art Historians got started and why there was a need for it. Several telling quotes about how art historians are regarded, lead the section, and the introduction that follows it states that the "basics of where an art historian trained or who his/her major influence was, or even what methodology the scholarship employs are often impossible to discern." The "Recent Entries" link allows visitors to go back to January of 2009, and they can also find entries from 2002-2008 available at the bottom of the page. The site is also available in German, French, Dutch, and Italian.
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