98 artists for kids to look up

My last day with the third graders at PS 48, I wanted to give them something memorable – something they could explore on their own, and have their own experience with. I had an idea to give each (almost 100) kid a card with the name of an artist they probably aren’t familiar with – more contemporary, maybe less known, maybe even living. Ideally the kid would go home and look up the artist’s name on a search engine, and be off exploring their work or biography.

I eventually turned to Google, thinking there already was a list of artists for kids I could look to for reference. It’s possible I wan’t looking in the right places online – but my findings were somewhat disturbing. This list in particular featured Frida as the only female, from a list of thirteen:

From this I decided to make an entirely new list with a higher ratio of non-male and international artists. This could be helpful for kids aged 6 and up. To be safe, none of the chosen artists are known for work that is inappropriate or contains nudity.

(Note that some are searchable simply by their first and last name, however it is best to search using first name, last name, followed by the word “art”.
1. Tomoko Kashiki
2. Yayoi Kusama
3. Joseph Albers
4. Wayne Theibaud
5. Cecily Brown
6. Rafael Rozendaal
7. Giorgio de Chirico
8. Chuck Close
9. Federico Herrero
10. Joan Miro
11. Man Ray
12. Sterling Ruby
13. Mark Rothko
14. Al Held
15. Willem de Kooning
16. James Whistler
17. Olafur Eliasson
18. Edward Hopper
19. Jasper Johns
20. Salvador Dali
21. Donald Judd
22. Yves Klein
23. Paul Klee
24. Roy Lichtenstein
25. Sol Lewitt
26. Gustav Klimt
27. Ismau Noguchi
28. Rene Magritte
29. Nam June Paik
30. Gerhard Richter
31. Henri Rousseau
32. Tom Sachs
33. Kiki Smith
34. Richard Serra
35. Pierre Soulages
36. Frank Stella
37. Cy Twombly
38. James Turrell
39. Jim Dine
40. Fernand Leger
41. Helen Frankenthaler
42. Katharina Grosse
43. Dan Colen
44. Andreas Gursky
45. Joaquin Torres Garcia
46. Giacomo Balla
47. Ashely Peifer
48. Anne Ten Donkelaar
49. Uta Barth
50. Susan Cianciolo
51. Ryoko Aoki
52. Nobuhiro Shimura
53. Tanya Schultz
54. Austin Lee
55. Matisse
56. Milton Avery
57. Ugo Rondinone
58. Yann Gerstberger
59. Richard Diebenkorn
60. Peter Alexander
61. John Finneran
62. Angel Oloshove
63. Patrick Henry Bruce
64. John McCallister
65. He Jiaying
66. Joe Reihsen
67. Hattie Stewart
68. MC Escher
69. Keith Haring
70. Ellen Gallagher
71. Jack Goldstein
72. Ellsworth Kelly
73. Elizabeth Murray
74. Albert Oehlen
75. Dieter Roth
76. Amy Sillman
77. Paul Thek
78. Andrew Wyeth
79. Jules Olitski
80. Getulio Alviani
81. Reed Anderson
82. David Annesley
83. Nemesio Antúnez
84. Qiu Anxiong
85. Mira Schendel
86. Cory Arcangel
87. John Armleder
88. Gonzalo Ariza
89. Ruth Asawa
90. Alex Katz
91. Nancy Azara
92. Peter Angermann
93. Antonio Bandeira
94. Mcdonald Bane
95. Colette Bangert
96. Lance Bangs
97. Walter Darby Bannard
98. Hwang Samyong