MininovaHunt

Hardcover: 258 pages
Publisher: Facts on File (March 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0816043973
ISBN-13: 978-0816043972

From Library Journal
This current A-Z title is a selective biographical encyclopedia of women artists from the United States. Kort (A to Z of American Women Writers) and Sonneborn (A to Z of American Women in the Performing Arts) offer 131 entries, making this not nearly as exhaustive as North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century (NAWA), which has over 2000 entries (only 24 artists in this A-Z are not in NAWA). However, this volume has a broader chronological range, including artists active from the 17th through the 20th centuries, and the essays are longer and more descriptive. In addition, the informal tone makes the text extremely readable. Each biographical essay quickly denotes the artist's dates and artistic medium(s) and then discusses her life and achievements, ending with a secondary bibliography of two or three resources. While the cited works tend to be current, there are problems with some of the web sites: typos mar a few URLs, and some sites are already outdated. Kort and Sonneborn conclude with recommended sources and four indexes: artistic medium, artistic style, year of birth, and a good, very detailed general index. This is ultimately a subjective listing (the artistic style index, for example, contains only two performance artists, neither as controversial as Karen Finley) and is suitable primarily for patrons needing a starting place. Recommended for undergraduate libraries and public libraries with an interest in the arts and/or women's studies; libraries already owning a resource like NAWA may wish to pass, particularly if their patrons are chiefly advanced researchers. Cynthia A. Johnson, Barnard Coll. Lib., New York
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The publication in the A to Z of Women series profiles 130 American women artists who work in a variety of visual mediums, among them painting, sculpture, printmaking, graphic arts, photography, architecture, and quilting. Coverage ranges from colonial times to the present and includes a representative collection of artists from different geographical, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Each entry is between one and three pages long and begins with a paragraph assessing the artist's impact, then continues with biographical information, including influences on the artist and the evolution of her style. The text also includes descriptions of significant exhibits and assessments by contemporary critics. Each entry concludes with an average of three to five references. Fifty-five of the entries contain a picture of the artist.

"Recommended Sources on American Women in the Visual Arts" follows the last entry and includes periodicals and Web sites as well as books. There are also lists of the artists sorted by medium, artistic style, and year of birth. The volume concludes with a comprehensive index.

The main defect of this book is that there are no pictures of works unless they happen to appear in the artists' photographs. A reader can only try to imagine from the description what the art being discussed looks like or use the book as a jumping-off point to another resource that does include images. Other than that drawback, this is a well-written reference tool that gives a good deal of information in a relatively short space. Fifty-nine of the women in this book are also covered in Delia Gaze's Dictionary of Women Artists (Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997), and 39 are in Laurie Collier Hillstrom and Kevin Hillstrom's Contemporary Women Artists (St. James, 1999). Libraries that have comprehensive collections on art and artists will probably not need to supplement their holdings with this work. However, high-school, public, and academic libraries that wish to expand their coverage of American women artists in the visual arts will find this a useful addition. RBB


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