Commonly Used Terms
People
If people use a specific term to describe themselves and/or their cultural group, respect and defer to their choice. If their choice is not in line with your organization’s style or the style outlined here and you feel strongly about changing it, including making capitalization or spelling updates, ask permission first.
- 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: Whether terms such as African American, Italian American, Chinese American, and the like should be spelled open or hyphenated has been the subject of considerable controversy. But since the hyphen does not aid comprehension in such terms as those mentioned above, it may be omitted unless a particular author or publisher prefers the hyphen.
Art Movements, Schools, Styles, and Terms
- abstract art
- Abstract Expressionism
- Art Deco
- Art Nouveau
- art making (v.); art-making (adj.)
- Arte Povera
- Arts and Crafts movement
- artwork
- assemblage
- Baroque (capped in ref. to seventeenth-century style only)
- Bauhaus
- Brutalism
- Byzantine (capped in ref. to style or period only)
- 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 (adj. and n.)
- Readymade (in reference to work by Duchamp)
- Realism (capped in ref. to nineteenth-century movement only)
- Renaissance, Early, High, Late
- Romanesque
- Romanticism (capped in ref. to nineteenth-century movement only)
- self-portrait
- Social Realism
- sound art
- still life, still lifes (noun; not still lives); still-life (adj.)
- structuralism
- Surrealism
Other Terms
Please refer to Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged [if available], Collegiate, or free online dictionaries for terms not listed here.
- 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, do not hyphenate in a phrase such as “he painted in black and white.”)
- catalog (n., when referring to lists of non-artistic materials, retail catalogs, etc.)
- catalogue (n., when referring to exhibition catalogues or extensive listings of artworks)
- dialog (n., popup window)
- dialogue (n., conversation)
- e-book
- e-tickets
- filmmaker
- fundraiser, fundraising
- Indigenous (when referring to racial or ethnic identity only; lowercase in other senses, ex. “indigenous flora”)
- internet
- live stream (n.); live-stream/live-streaming (v., adj.)
- log in (v.)
- login (n., adj.)
- 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, applies regardless of placement in sentence)
- online
- on-site (not onsite or on site, applies regardless of placement in sentence)
- re-create (to create again)
- recreate (refresh, take recreation)
- sign up (verb); sign-up (adj.): Sign up for our newsletter using the sign-up link
- web page (not webpage)
- website
- Wi-Fi (not WiFi, wifi, or wi-fi)