In addition to online displays, Getty Vocabularies are available as Linked Open Data, XML, Relational Tables, and through APIs. Learn more.

Catherine wheel or rose window? Cohuacalco or Snake House? Gaochang or Qara-Hoja? Getty Vocabularies are structured resources for the visual arts domain, including art, architecture, decorative arts, other cultural works, archival materials, visual surrogates, and art conservation. Compliant with international standards for structured and controlled vocabularies, they provide authoritative information for catalogers, researchers, and data providers. Getty Vocabularies contain coreferences to other resources where topics overlap. However, they are unique in their global coverage of the defined domain, in citing published sources and contributors, in allowing interconnections among historical and current information, in accommodating the sometimes debated and ambiguous nature of art historical information, and in allowing complex relationships within and between Vocabularies. Thus they are not simple 'value vocabularies'; they are also rich 'knowledge bases' in themselves. Although each Vocabulary requires a small set of minimum data, the data model allows for rich data that may be exploited for research and discovery. Getty Vocabularies strive to be ever more multilingual, multicultural, and inclusive, focusing also on diversity, equity, unbiased and antiracist terminology, and accessibility. The Vocabularies grow through contributions from institutions and projects comprising the expert user community. They are freely and openly available for use under the Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-By) 1.0. To search the Vocabularies and view the information in online displays, click on the links below. Explore other options for obtaining the Getty Vocabulary data or for contributing by clicking on links in the left navigation bar.

AAT
AAT is a thesaurus containing generic terms in several languages, relationships, sources, and scope notes for agents, work types, roles, materials, styles, cultures, and techniques related to art, architecture, and other cultural heritage (e.g., amphora, oil paint, olieverf, acetolysis, sintering, orthographic drawings, Olmeca, Rinascimento, Buddhism, watercolors, asa-no-ha-toji, sralais).
CONA
CONA focuses on architecture, multiples, and works depicted in other works. It is a thesaurus that includes titles, artist attribution, creation dates, relationships, and location for works both current and historical, documented as items or in groups, whether works are extant, destroyed, or planned but never built (e.g., Florentine Codex, Codice Fiorentino, Guernica, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Chayasomesvara Temple, Hagia Sofia, The Great Wave, Kanagawa oki nami ura, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, Venus de Milo).
IA
IA is a thesaurus that includes proper names, relationships, and dates for iconographical narratives, religious or fictional characters, historical events, names of literary works and performing art. IA has a special focus on non-Western topics, with coreferences to other resources including Iconclass for overlapping Western themes (e.g., Bouddha couché, Adoration of the Magi, Flood of Deucalion, French Revolution, Xibalba, Niflheim, Shiva, Apedemak, Tumatauenga).
TGN
TGN is a unique thesaurus that is global in scope but not comprehensive, focusing on places relevant to art, architecture, and related disciplines. Included are place names, rich relationships, place types, dates, notes, and coordinates for historical and current cities, nations, empires, archaeological sites, lost settlements, and physical features tailored to our core audience. TGN has coreferences to GIS and other resources (e.g., Thebes, Diospolis, Ottoman Empire, Mogao Caves, Ch'ien-fu-tung, Ganges River).
ULAN
ULAN includes names, rich relationships, notes, sources, and biographical information for artists, architects, firms, studios, repositories, and patrons, both individuals and corporate bodies, named and anonymous. It may include coreferences to other resources to allow interconnections between related disciplines (e.g., Titian, Tiziano Vecellio, Mark Rothko, Cai Xiang, Crevole Master, Altobelli & Molins, Rajaraja Museum, Jenaer Glaswerk Schott).
CDWA
CDWA is a set of guidelines and cataloging rules for the description of art, architecture, and other cultural works. CDWA advises which fields and categories in art metadata are appropriate for the use of Getty Vocabularies and other terminology resources. CDWA represents common practice and advises best practice for cataloging, based on surveys and consensus building with the user community.

Find out more about the Getty Vocabularies: