This guide provides information on disability in the arts, disability art, and disability studies. Included are links to resources such as artists, books, websites, articles, media, and organizations about this topic. The people highlighted in this guide are either artists with documented disabilities or artists who create art centering disabilities, their own or otherwise. For this guide, a disabled person is defined as anyone who is disabled by barriers within our society, not by their impairment or difference. This follows the social model of disability and includes artists with mental illnesses who require high levels of support, such as Yayoi Kusama, who has been highlighted in this guide. We acknowledge that disability cannot be encompassed by a singular definition and that the discourse within the community is ever-changing.  

This guide does not represent a comprehensive or definitive list of all the important artists, pieces, and texts related to disability in the arts. The highlighted people and resources were selected using library materials, popular press articles, and museum websites. If you need help finding additional information or would like to nominate an individual or group to be included in this list, please fill out our Suggestions & Feedback form. 

#FromMarginToCenter is born out of the clear need to draw attention to marginalized voices, not only across our society, but specifically in our library. We need to acknowledge that nondominant experiences are not well represented in our collections and resources, and, further, we need to do something about it.

• Create a growing body of resources designed to highlight contemporary artists and designers across a broad range of identities. Our selection criteria combine staff expertise and interest, current events, and providing a balanced range of resources, knowing that this is an emerging body of material that will evolve and take different shapes over time.

• After putting in the work to create a resource guide, we amplify those voices. We highlight specific creators in our social media, look for ways to collect more material about or by the person in question, and find ways to embed references to these folks in our more general use guides, as well as our teaching, outreach, reference, and other activities.

For more information, see the #FromMarginToCenter Initiative page on our website.

Materials accessed in this guide are provided for personal and/or scholarly use.  Users are responsible for obtaining any copyright permissions that may be required for their own further uses of that material.  For more information about fair use please refer to the College Art Association Code of Best Practices in Fair Use in the Visual Arts.