Thieme-Becker
The dictionary was begun under the editorship of Ulrich Thieme (1865–1922) (volumes one to fifteen) and Felix Becker (1864–1928) (volumes one to four). It was completed under the editorship of Frederick Charles Willis (b. 1883) (volumes fourteen and fifteen) and Hans Vollmer (1878–1969) (volumes sixteen to thirty-seven)."The Project: From Thieme-Becker to the Artists’ Database,"Vollmer
Thieme-Becker was immediately supplemented by Vollmer's ''Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler des XX. Jahrhunderts'' (English: ''General Dictionary of Artists of the 20th Century''), published in six volumes by E.A. Seemann between 1953 and 1962. The supplement is referred to as Vollmer, and the two works together as Thieme-Becker-Vollmer.Scope and reputation
The first thirty-seven volumes contain 148,180 biographies written with the help of around 400 specialists worldwide. The six supplementary volumes contain a further 47,229 biographies written almost entirely by Hans Vollmer. The attention Thieme-Becker-Vollmer paid to non-Western artists, including those from Asia and the Islamic world, made it a "pioneering enterprise." It is still valued for its coverage of otherwise little-known artists, architects, and designers, and as a '' summa'' of art scholarship in the first half of the twentieth century. It "remains the most authoritative dictionary of artists" and the most widely consulted reference of its kind, even in English-speaking countries. The bibliographic sections are considered "outstanding" and "invaluable." Thieme-Becker-Vollmer has rarely been out of print. Anastatic and photomechanical facsimiles of the original volumes were published from the 1940s to the 1980s, and the entire forty-three-volume set has been reissued in trade paperback (1992), in a student edition (1999), and on CD-ROM (2008). The publication of a six-volume index as late as 1996–1997 was a measure of the work's enduring usefulness.Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon
A complete overhaul of Thieme-Becker-Vollmer began in 1969 under the title ''Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker'', or ''AKL'' (English: literally ''General Dictionary of Artists: The Artists of All Times and Nations'', but marketed as ''Artists of the World''). Early progress was slow (three volumes 1983–1989), due partly to the project's isolation inReferences
{{Authority control Art and architecture dictionaries Encyclopedias of art German biographical dictionaries Biographies about artists