SIKART
online biographical dictionary and database on visual art in Switzerland and Liechtenstein
SIKART Lexicon on Art in Switzerland is an online encyclopedia of historical and contemporary art in Switzerland. SIKART is published by the Swiss Institute for Art Research (SIK-ISEA), which is headquartered in Zurich.
Organisation
SIKART provides information on artists in the field of the visual arts. This includes basic biographical data as well as details of artists’ fields of activity, exhibitions, publications and awards. Selected entries feature an article providing biographical information, an appraisal of the respective artist’s work as well as a selection of images. SIKART encompasses more than 17,000 personal entries, approximately 1,900 detailed monographic lexicon articles and almost 40 thematic articles about Swiss art history.
In addition to new basic personal entries, new articles by numerous specialists are published under the direction of the scientific SIKART editorial team on an ongoing basis. In the case of contemporary artists, their reception in the art world is decisive for the allocation of an article, whereas new research findings are decisive in the case of historical artists. Lexicon articles are assigned after thorough evaluation based on objective criteria related to public reception: publications, participation in exhibitions, scholarships and awards as well as acquisitions made by institutional collections.
History
The first encyclopaedia of artists published by the Swiss Institute for Art Research appeared in 1981 under the title Lexicon of Contemporary Swiss Artists.
“SIKART” enters the record as online biographical dictionary and database on visual art in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what SIKART, online and biographical can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“SIKART” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, SIKART, online and biographical provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 12, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q683543. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “SIKART” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.