The Getty has released its Union List of Artist Names (ULAN)® as linked open data. It is available with other Getty vocabularies (The Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) ® and The Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN) ®) here.
About the database
The Union List of Artist Names (ULAN)® is a resource containing more than 650,000 names and biographical information for current and historical artists, architects, patrons, workshops, firms, museums, and other people and groups associated with the creation and history of art, architecture, and other works of cultural heritage. ULAN includes records for identified people, as well as for anonymous “hands.” It also includes links to related people and groups within ULAN, as well as links to places in the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names® (TGN) and to terms in the Getty’s renowned thesaurus of cultural heritage terminology, the Art & Architecture Thesaurus® (AAT).
And about Linked Open Data
Linked Open Data is a method of publishing datasets that structurally and technically encodes the semantic links. For example, it makes linkages between an artist and the places where he or she was born, worked, and died; between an artist and the works he or she produced; and between works and bibliographic references. Linked Open Data can be used by computers to aid searchers in navigating the vast, confusing universe of information on the Internet.
You can read the full article here.