Commonly used terms
People
If people use a specific term to describe themselves, their cultural group, or both, respect and defer to their choice. If their choice doesn’t match your organization’s style or the style in this article, and you feel strongly about changing it, ask permission first. This includes changes to capitalization or spelling.
- Capitalize Black when referring to people of African descent
- Capitalize Native and Indigenous when referring to people or groups of people
- Do not capitalize white when referring to people of European descent
- LGBTQ+ is an inclusive but relatively brief choice
- From the Chicago Manual: People disagree about whether to hyphenate terms like African American, Italian American, and Chinese American. But since the hyphen does not aid comprehension in such terms, you can leave it out unless you or the person you're talking about prefer the hyphen.
Art movements, schools, styles, and terms
- abstract art
- Abstract Expressionism
- Art Deco
- Art Nouveau
- art making (verb); art-making (adjective)
- Arte Povera
- Arts and Crafts movement
- artwork
- assemblage
- Baroque (capitalized only for the seventeenth-century style)
- Bauhaus
- Brutalism
- Byzantine (capitalized only for the style or period)
- classicism
- CoBrA
- collage
- Color Field, Color Field painting
- Conceptual art
- Constructivism
- Cubism
- Dada, Dadaism
- earthworks
- Expressionism
- Fauvism
- Fluxus
- Futurism
- gelatin silver print (no hyphen)
- geometric abstraction
- German Expressionism
- gestural painting
- Happenings
- Impressionism
- International Style
- magic realism
- Mannerism
- medium, mediums (not “media,” except when referring to the broadcast or print media, or the mass media)
- Minimal art, Minimalism
- mobile
- modern
- modernism
- modern movement
- moving image (no hyphen, even for adjectival uses like "moving image work," unless the hyphen is required to avoid vagueness or confusion)
- multimedia
- Neoclassicism
- Neo-Expressionism
- Neo-Impressionism
- Neo-Plasticism
- Neorealism
- New York School
- Old Master
- Op art
- performance art
- Photo-Realism
- placemaking (not place-making)
- pointillism
- Pop art
- Post-Impressionism
- postmodern
- poststructuralism
- Precisionism
- Pre-Columbian
- Pre-Raphaelite
- readymade (adjective and noun)
- Readymade (in reference to work by Duchamp)
- Realism (capitalized only for the nineteenth-century movement)
- Renaissance, Early, High, Late
- Romanesque
- Romanticism (capitalized only for the nineteenth-century movement)
- self-portrait
- Social Realism
- sound art
- still life, still lifes (noun; not still lives); still-life (adjective)
- structuralism
- Surrealism
Other terms
For terms that aren’t listed here, see Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged (if you have access), Collegiate, or free online dictionaries.
- as well as (do not use this phrase when “and” will suffice, which is in most cases.)
- black-and-white (hyphenated before a noun; in running text, don’t hyphenate in a phrase like “he painted in black and white.”)
- catalog (noun; when referring to lists of non-artistic materials, retail catalogs, and so on)
- catalogue (noun; when referring to exhibition catalogues or extensive listings of artworks)
- dialog (noun; popup window)
- dialogue (noun; conversation)
- e-book
- e-tickets
- filmmaker
- fundraiser, fundraising
- Indigenous (when referring to racial or ethnic identity only; lowercase in other senses, for example, "indigenous flora")
- internet
- live stream (noun); live-stream, live-streaming (verb, adjective)
- log in (verb)
- login (noun, adjective)
- lookup number (not look up or look-up)
- mid-1940s (for date)
- mid-forties (for age of a person)
- nonprofit
- off-site (not offsite or off site, in any position in a sentence)
- online
- on-site (not onsite or on site, in any position in sentence)
- re-create (to create again)
- recreate (refresh, take recreation)
- sign up (verb); sign-up (adjective): Sign up for our newsletter using the sign-up link
- web page (not webpage)
- website
- Wi-Fi (not WiFi, wifi, or wi-fi)