Black Heritage Month Celebration: Web Resources

The Black Arts Movement was a politically motivated, loosely connected group of poets, painters, musicians, dramatists, and other artists active in the African American community from 1965 to 1976. The movement is often cited as the "artistic sister of the Black Power Movement." The Black Arts Movement saw immense growth in every aspect of the arts for African-Americans all over the country. Poetry, however, saw the most growth during the movement. The Black Arts Movement saw the rise to fame of numerous African-American poets of the time, and some of their most powerful and influential works were published during that era. 

Publishers/Establishments

• The Black Arts Repertory Theatre
  • The Black Arts Repertory Theatre was founded by Amiri Baraka in 1965 in Harlem. Baraka's founding of the Theatre is seen to be the starting point of the Black Arts Movement. When founding the Theatre, Baraka envisioned a Black artistic school responsive to the black community, attached to the militant politics of the Black Power movement, and rooted in the same urban landscape as the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.
• Negro Digest/Black World
  • ​Negro Digest, which changed its name to Black World in 1970, was a major venue for the publication of poetry by Black artists during the Black Arts Movement. From 1967 to 1975, the magazine ran an annual special issue on poetry. The magazine ceased publication in 1976.
• Broadside Press
  • Founded by poet Dudley Randall in 1965 in Detroit, Michigan, Broadside Press published the works of many Black poets of the Black Arts Movement. 
• Third World Press
  • Third World Press was founded by Haki R. Madhubuti in 1967 in Chicago, Illinois. Third World Press began publishing the works of African American writers and continues that tradition to this day.
• Freedomways 
  • Freedomways Magazine was also a prominent publisher of the Black Arts Movement. It focused on Black arts, studies, and intellectual and cultural movements. Freedomways mostly appealed to younger African-Americans. Archived publications of Freedomways can be viewed here.
• Liberator 
  • ​Liberator Magazine was a Black nationalist magazine that published many of the early writing of critical voices of the Black Arts Movement. Amiri Baraka's "Black Art" was first published in print in Liberator.

Deborah B. Porter (left), E. J. Josey (middle) and Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden (right) are some of the Black librarians who will be highlighted for their activism in an upcoming documentary called "Are You A Librarian: The Untold Story of Black Librarians." (Library of Con, Abbey Crain/canva)

"The expansive growth of the web and social media and the wide use of these platforms by Black people presents significant opportunities for archivists and other memory workers interested in documenting the contemporary Black experience. But while web archiving practice and tools have grown over the past twenty-five years, it is a cost prohibitive archiving activity and presents access and resource challenges that prevent large sectors of the archives profession and especially Black collecting organizations from fully engaging in the practice. The Archiving the Black Web national forum is an urgent call to action to address these issues with the goal of establishing a more equitable and accessible web archiving practice that can more effectively document the Black experience online." #ATBA2021

https://archivingtheblackweb.org/

• Archives of American Art

  ​The Archives of American Art is the world’s preeminent and most widely used research center dedicated to collecting, preserving, and providing access to primary sources that document the history of the visual arts in America.

• Artcyclopedia

  ​A comprehensive database of artists and their works. Users can search the website by an artist’s name, the name of an artistic work, or for a particular art museum.

• Artsy | The Art World Online

  ​Features the world’s leading galleries, museum collections, foundations, artist estates, art fairs, and benefit auctions, all in one place.

• askART

  ​An online database containing close to 300,000 artists, providing biographies, images, citations, museums owning their work and galleries representing the artist's work.

• Bibliography of BIPOC Artists, Collectors, and Dealers

  Welcome to the Frick Art Reference Library’s research guide to artists, collectors, and dealers of underrepresented identities in our collections, including those who are Black, Indigenous, Asian, and Hispanic and Latinx. In recognition of the largely European and Western-centric nature of the Library’s collection, this guide seeks to serve as a public tool through which materials on BIPOC artists, collectors, and dealers can be made more discoverable. This resource contains materials in a variety of formats, including books, e-books, archived websites, exhibition catalogs, and artist files comprised of photographic reproductions of artworks and historical documentation.

• Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) and Répertoire international de la littérature de l'art (RILA)

  The Getty provides access to the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) and to the Répertoire international de la littérature de l'art (RILA) for no charge on its website. These citation databases, searchable together, cover material published between 1975 and 2007. For material published after 2007 see the International Bibliography of Art (IBA).

• The History Makers

  The HistoryMakers is a national 501(c)(3) non-profit research and educational institution committed to preserving and making widely accessible the untold personal stories of both well-known and unsung African Americans. Through the media and a series of user-friendly products, services and events, The HistoryMakers enlightens, entertains and educates the public, helping to refashion a more inclusive record of American history.

• International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR)

  Offers impartial and authoritative information on authenticity, ownership, theft, and other artistic, legal, and ethical issues concerning art objects. IFAR serves as a bridge between the public, and the scholarly and commercial art communities. We publish the award-winning quarterly IFAR Journal; organize conferences, panels, and lectures; offer a unique Art Authentication Research Service and provenance research services; provide comprehensive Web-based resources, such as the Catalogue Raisonné Database and the Art Law & Cultural Property Database; and serve as an information resource. We invite all people interested in the visual arts to join our organization and help support our activities.

• Latin American and Caribbean Contemporary Art Web Archive

  The Latin American and Caribbean Contemporary Art Web Archive is a collection developed by the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation's Art & Architecture Librarians, and is an extension of an existing effort focused on collecting publications in all formats that document contemporary art and artists of Latin America and the Caribbean. The agreement defines contemporary art as it refers to 'developments in the visual arts from 1975 to the present,' with material sought 'for the entire career of artists who have been active at any time since 1975.' This archive aims to preserve for researchers the personal and official websites belonging to notable contemporary Latin American and Caribbean artists, artists’ collectives, artists’ groups, galleries, museums, and related entities in order to assure the continuing availability of the important content they contain.

• Met Publications

  The Met presents over 5,000 years of art from around the world for everyone to experience and enjoy.

• The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

  Pairs essays and works of art with chronologies, telling the story of art and global culture through the Museum’s collection.

• New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC)

  The New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC) consists of the research libraries and archives of three leading art museums in New York City: The Brooklyn Museum, The Frick Collection, and The Museum of Modern Art. With funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, NYARC was formed in 2006 to facilitate collaboration that results in enhanced resources to research communities.

• NYPL Digital Collections

  Provides access to over 700,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more.