Searching Help

Searching for artists

Entering a first and/or last name in the search form will search for an exact name match. For example, if Richard Johnson is in the directory and you search for Rick Johnson, you will not find any results (unless of course there is also a Rick Johnson in the directory). Selecting specialties from the list and/or typing in other specialties, will search for artist with any of the specialties selected or typed in. To select multiple options from the list, hold down the control key (label ctrl) on a PC or the option key on a Mac while clicking the options you want to select. If you want to enter in multiple other specialties separate them using commas. If the specialty option is a type of art followed by the word "any" (such as Visual - Any), the search will look for the artists who are listed as working in that field of art. For other options, the portion of the option before the dash is irrelevant. For example, if you search for Visual - Cartoonist, you may find an artist who is listed as working in Design/Commercial Art but has the specialty "Cartoonist". Note that selecting a specialty from the list does not guarantee that any artist will have that specialty.

Entering keywords will do a full-text relevance search of the artist's statement, biography, commission types, teaching topics, and other expertise. Usually, this means that an artist's record contains any of your keywords in any of these areas, that artist will be found by the search.

If you enter an artist's name, specialties, and keyword, the search will only find artists that satisfy all of these categories. The same occurs if you enter search criteria for two of these categories. If you include a keyword search, the results will be sorted by keyword relevance. Otherwise the results will be sorted by the artist's last name.

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Searching for artwork

Entering a text in the title field will do a sub-string search for the title of the piece. This means that if what you entered is contained within the title of a piece, that piece will be found by the search. For example if you search for "Cat" as the title, you could find pieces with titles like "Small Cat" or "The Cats of the Wild."

Entering an artist's first and/or last name will do an exact name search on the artist of piece.

If you make a selection other than "Any" for type of work, your search will be limited to the type you have selected. If you make a type of work selection and do not enter any other information in the search, the search will return a list of all the artwork of that type in the database.

If you enter a medium, this will limit the search to visual art, and return pieces of art whose media list contains the text you entered. For example, if you search for "oil", in addition to visual art with the media "oil" you may find pieces with media such as "oil on canvas" or "wood and oil paint." However if you search for multiple media, you might run into trouble, because if you search for "watercolor and pencil" you will not find pieces with the medium of "pencil and watercolor" or "watercolor, pencil, cardboard."

Entering a source book or album will limit the search to literature and music and return results where the source is identical to the source you entered.

If you provide information for multiple categories, only those results that satisfy all you search conditions will be returned. If you included a keyword search, the results with be listed in order of relevance. Otherwise, the results will be listed in alphabetically order by title.

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