Getty Research InstituteCategories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA) is a foundational standard for cataloging art, architecture, and other cultural material. Published by the J. Paul Getty Trust in collaboration with the College Art Association, CDWA provides a comprehensive conceptual framework of around 540 categories and subcategories that guide museums, archives, and scholars in documenting works of art with consistent, rich metadata.
Background
CDWA originated in 1990 as a project of the Art Information Task Force (AITF), a collaborative initiative between the Getty and the College Art Association. The goal was to define a common set of categories representing how art historians, curators, and catalogers actually describe works of art, and to recommend best practices grounded in real-world cataloging. The standard has been revised multiple times, with the most recent 2024 edition edited by Murtha Baca and Patricia Harping, with Emily Benoff as Digital Content Manager for the revised edition. The 2024 revision was published as a web-based publication using the Quire framework.
Purpose & Scope
CDWA serves as a reference framework for the description of art objects, architectural works, groups and collections of works, and related images. It is not a database schema in itself but rather a conceptual model that existing systems can map to and new systems can use as a design reference. CDWA covers the full range of information needed to identify, describe, and contextualize a cultural work, from basic identification to provenance, exhibition history, conservation, and critical response.
Key Categories
CDWA organizes its categories into two major groups: Object/Architecture/Group categories (1-27) and Authority/Vocabulary Control categories (28-31). A subset of categories marked as "core" represent the minimum information needed to identify a work.
| # | Category | Core |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Object/Work | Yes |
| 2 | Classification | Yes |
| 3 | Titles or Names | Yes |
| 4 | Creation | Yes |
| 5 | Styles/Periods/Groups/Movements | No |
| 6 | Measurements | Yes |
| 7 | Materials/Techniques | Yes |
| 16 | Subject Matter | Yes |
| 21 | Current Location | Yes |
| 27 | Related Textual References | Yes |
| 28 | Person/Corporate Body Authority | Yes |
| 29 | Place/Location Authority | Yes |
| 30 | Generic Concept Authority | Yes |
| 31 | Subject Authority | Yes |
The full framework includes 27 object-level categories and 4 authority categories, each with numerous subcategories totaling around 540 descriptive elements.
Serializations & Technical Formats
CDWA is primarily a conceptual framework published as a human-readable document rather than a machine-readable schema. However, a subset called CDWA Lite was developed as an XML schema for exchange of core records. CDWA Lite has since been superseded by LIDO (Lightweight Information Describing Objects) as the preferred XML exchange format for museum data. The CDWA publication includes an entity relationship diagram and a metadata standards crosswalk mapping CDWA categories to other standards.
Governance & Maintenance
CDWA is maintained by the Getty Vocabulary Program, part of the Getty Research Institute. The standard is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Comments and questions are directed to cdwa@getty.edu. CDWA advises the use of the Getty Vocabularies (Art & Architecture Thesaurus, Union List of Artist Names, Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names, and Cultural Objects Name Authority) for controlled terminology.
Notable Implementations
CDWA serves as the conceptual foundation for the Cultural Objects Name Authority (CONA), maintained by the Getty. Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO), a publication of the Visual Resources Association, incorporates a subset of CDWA categories as practical cataloging guidelines for the visual resources community. Many museum collection management systems reference CDWA categories in their data models. The standard is also used in art history education as a reference for how cultural works should be documented.
Related Standards
CDWA Lite was a direct XML implementation of core CDWA categories, now superseded by LIDO for XML exchange. Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO) is a practical guide derived from CDWA. VRA Core is a complementary standard focused on visual resources. The Getty Vocabularies (AAT, ULAN, TGN, CONA) provide controlled terminology referenced throughout CDWA.