News

New York, NY – The International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR) – a nonprofit educational and research organization addressing issues of art attribution, authenticity, provenance, theft and restitution – announces important new functionality to its online Catalogues Raisonnés Database. The new features, designed in response to user requests, allow researchers to filter their searches to find  digitized and online catalogues among the thousands of publications in the Database.

Launched in 2008, along with IFAR’s online Art Law & Cultural Property Database and Provenance Guide, the Catalogues Raisonnés Database is a comprehensive bibliographic resource featuring detailed entries on catalogues raisonnés in the visual arts. Catalogues raisonnés – literally, reasoned catalogues – are descriptive listings of an artist’s complete body of work or work in a particular medium. They are essential research tools for art professionals, scholars, collectors, and others for studying the attribution and ownership history of a work of art.  They are also consulted to research an artist’s development. IFAR makes the Database available free of charge to all and updates it regularly.

Currently, IFAR’s Catalogues Raisonnés Database, accessed at www.ifar.org, contains information on more than 4,700 published and in-preparation catalogues raisonnés concerning 3,175 artists. These can be searched by author’s name, artist’s name, and artist’s place of birth, death or period of activity. The new filters enable users to limit search results to fully digitized print catalogues and both free and subscription-based “born-digital” online catalogues raisonnés. To date, the Database includes 280 digitized print catalogues and more than 200 online catalogues raisonnés, the majority of which are not listed in WorldCat or other library records.

On the revamped site, filtered searches bring up annotated entries containing links to fully digitized print publications or online catalogues raisonnés. Searches will also bring up online catalogues raisonnés that are still in preparation. A previous enhancement enabled users to locate the nearest library holding a copy of a catalogue.

Dr. Sharon Flescher, IFAR’s Executive Director, who conceived and developed IFAR’s Catalogues Raisonnés Database and its other online resources as part of its educational mission, said: “I am proud of this latest Database enhancement and hope that it will benefit the global art community and encourage even more people to use this singular and very popular research tool.” She added that, “this is one of several projects that IFAR is launching as part of its 50^th Anniversary activities.”

Dr. Lisa Duffy-Zeballos, IFAR’s Art Research Director, who directed this enhancement project with Dr. Flescher, noted that “although it was begun before the Covid-19 pandemic, the health crisis has underscored the need for greater access to digital resources. With libraries closed around the world, digital catalogues have become the primary means of conducting object-based art historical research. Thus, the timing of this project is particularly propitious.”

Many libraries, museums and other institutions link from their websites to IFAR’s Catalogues Raisonnés Database. It is a truly unique resource. It is the only electronic database of catalogues raisonnés in all media of the visual arts and the only source for information on catalogues raisonnés in preparation. In 2012, the New York Public Library asked to partner with IFAR to inform it of newly published catalogues, thereby enabling the Database to grow at an even greater rate.

IFAR’s Catalogues Raisonnés Database has benefited over the years from prestigious philanthropic grants, for which we are very grateful. Launched initially with a lead grant from The Henry Luce Foundation and other funders, including the Dedalus Foundation, The Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, and The Samuel H. Kress Foundation, this latest enhancement project was supported by grants from The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, The Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation, and the Dr. Lee MacCormick Edwards Foundation. It builds on an interim enhancement project in 2016 that was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.      

We would also like to acknowledge the many people who have worked on this Database, in particular, Faith Pleasanton and Robert DeCandido.