AAT (Art & Architecture Thesaurus)

AAT (Art & Architecture Thesaurus)
Name	AAT (Art & Architecture Thesaurus)
Type	Controlled vocabulary
Owner	Getty Research Institute
Country	United States
Established	1983

AAT (Art & Architecture Thesaurus) is a structured, multilingual controlled vocabulary used to describe objects, materials, techniques, styles, and activities in the visual arts and architecture. It supports consistent cataloging and retrieval across museums, libraries, archives, and digital collections managed by institutions such as the Getty Research Institute, Smithsonian Institution, British Museum, and Rijksmuseum. The vocabulary interoperates with standards and projects including CIDOC CRM, Getty Vocabularies, Library of Congress, and Europeana to enable shared discovery across collections.

Overview

The thesaurus organizes named and descriptive terms for artworks, architectural features, materials, and production processes to facilitate indexing in systems used by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Museum of Modern Art. It aligns with thesauri and authority files like the Library of Congress Subject Headings, Union List of Artist Names, International Council of Museums registers, and Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names to support crosswalks with projects such as Europeana, Digital Public Library of America, WorldCat, and ArchivesHub. Major adopters include institutions in networks such as ARTstor, Cultural Heritage Imaging, Smithsonian Institution Research Information System, and the National Gallery.

History and Development

Initiated in the early 1980s by the Getty Trust and the Getty Research Institute, the vocabulary emerged alongside digitization efforts at the J. Paul Getty Museum and collaborations with the Bibliothèque nationale de France, British Library, and Rijksmuseum. Influences and partnerships drew from cataloging traditions at the Library of Congress, the Cooper-Hewitt, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and national projects like the Netherlands Institute for Art History. Subsequent editions and online releases involved international contributors from the International Council on Archives, ICOM, the Canadian Heritage Information Network, and the Australian Heritage Commission, reflecting developments in information retrieval at institutions such as Harvard Art Museums and Princeton University Art Museum.

Structure and Content

The thesaurus is organized into hierarchical and associative relationships covering object types, materials, techniques, styles, and agents used in collections at institutions like the Tate, Getty Museum, Uffizi Gallery, and Hermitage Museum. It employs facets and concept categories compatible with CIDOC CRM, Dublin Core, and MARC standards used by the British Library, Bibliothèque nationale de France, and National Diet Library. Content includes terms for crafts and practices documented by the Victoria and Albert Museum, design movements found at the Bauhaus Archive, and photographic processes cataloged by the George Eastman Museum, with scope and relationship notes supporting semantic mapping to vocabularies at the Rijksmuseum and Musée d’Orsay.

Editorial Policies and Governance

Editorial control is maintained by the Getty Research Institute with advisory input from curators and catalogers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution, British Museum, and Rijksmuseum. Governance draws on best practices from standards bodies such as ISO, the International Council of Museums, and the Library of Congress Policy and Standards Division; contributors and reviewers have included specialists affiliated with the Courtauld Institute, Yale Center for British Art, National Gallery of Art, and the Frick Collection. Policy documents guide term inclusion, hierarchical placement, and multilingual equivalence to support interoperability with initiatives like CIDOC CRM and the Getty Vocabulary Program.

Access and Distribution

The vocabulary is published online and distributed for integration into collection management systems used by TMS (Gallery Systems), Axiell, and EMu, and is referenced by discovery platforms such as Europeana, Digital Public Library of America, and OCLC WorldCat. Data releases and downloadable files support linking with authority files maintained by the Library of Congress, VIAF, British Library, and National Archives (UK) and are used in projects at institutions including the Smithsonian, Cooper Hewitt, and Rijksmuseum for public portals and research APIs.

Applications and Use in Cultural Heritage

Curators, archivists, and digital scholars at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, British Museum, Getty Museum, and Museum of Modern Art apply the thesaurus for descriptive metadata in exhibitions, online catalogs, and conservation records. It supports scholarly workflows connected to projects at the Courtauld Institute, J. Paul Getty Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, and the National Gallery by enabling faceted search across collections aggregated by Europeana, Digital Public Library of America, and MERLOT. Conservation departments at the National Portrait Gallery, Getty Conservation Institute, and the Louvre use the vocabulary to standardize materials and technique terms for treatment records and condition reporting.

Integration with Other Vocabularies and Standards

Designed for interoperability, the thesaurus is mapped to CIDOC CRM, Dublin Core, MARC, and SKOS to facilitate integration with the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names, Union List of Artist Names, Library of Congress Subject Headings, and VIAF. Crosswalks have been implemented in collaborations with Europeana, the Digital Public Library of America, the British Library, and the Rijksmuseum, and support linked data initiatives involving the Library of Congress, OCLC, and Wikimedia projects. These mappings enable combined discovery across institutional systems at the Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of Art, Bibliothèque nationale de France, and other cultural heritage aggregators.

Category:Controlled vocabularies Category:Art history Category:Museum informatics