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Art History: Find Images

Image Databases

  • ARTstor

    Founded with a mission to enhance scholarship and teaching through the use of digital images and media, Artstor is a nonprofit organization committed to digital collection solutions for universities, museums, schools, and libraries worldwide.

  • CAMIO

    CAMIO - OCLC's Catalog of Art Museum Images Online - is a growing online collection documenting works of art from around the world, representing the collections of prominent museums.

Bathers at La Grenouillère

Bathers at La Grenouillère by Claude Monet, 1869. The National Gallery, London.

Print Indexes

Art Index ARCHITECTURE LIBRARY Reserve (Ask the Librarian) z5937 .A78 N1 .A79

Historical Art Index, A.D. 400-1650: People, Places, and Events Depicted COLEMAN LIBRARY Reference Collection N8210.R6 1989

Twentieth Century Artists on Art: an Index to Artists' Writings, Statements, and Interviews COLEMAN LIBRARY General Collection NX456.R59 1985

Untitled by Donald Judd. 1991. The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, New York.

Image Collections Online

  • Art Institute of Chicago - Online Collection                

    Explore our online collections, which offer access to over 87,000 works and basic information about works of art from all areas of our encyclopedic collection.

  • Atlas: Database of exhibits                

    The Atlas database covers all the works exhibited in the Louvre - some 30,000 items.

  • British Museum Collection Database                

    There are currently 2,245,350 records available, which represent more than 3,500,000 objects. 930,908 records have one or more images.

  • Getty Museum                

    Thousands of images of artworks are available for download, without charge, under the Getty's Open Content Program.

  • Guggenheim Images                

    Through the Images for Academic Publishing (IAP) program hosted by ARTstor Digital Library, the Guggenheim provides a selection of publication-quality images free of charge for scholarly publications.

  • Helios: Photography Online                

    The permanent collection of photography at the Smithsonian American Art Museum was established in 1983, when the National Endowment for the Arts transferred more than 1,500 photographs by American photographers who had received NEA grants. The museum continued to acquire modern and contemporary images, as well as significant collections of work by Aaron Siskind, Diane Arbus, Timothy O'Sullivan, and Irving Penn.

  • Los Angeles County Museum of Art - Collections Online                

    Since its inception in 1965, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has been devoted to collecting works of art that span both history and geography, in addition to representing Los Angeles's uniquely diverse population.

  • Metropolitan Museum of Art - Collection Database                

    The Metropolitan Museum of Art collects, studies, conserves, and presents significant works of art across all times and cultures in order to connect people to creativity, knowledge, and ideas.

  • Museum of Modern Art - Online Collection                

    MoMA’s evolving collection contains almost 200,000 works of modern and contemporary art by over 10,000 artists. 63,000 works are available online.

  • Musée d'Orsay Collections                

    In the centre of Paris on the banks of the Seine, opposite the Tuileries Gardens, the museum was installed in the former Orsay railway station, built for the Universal Exhibition of 1900. So the building itself could be seen as the first "work of art" in the Musee d'Orsay, which displays collections of art from the period 1848 to 1914.

  • National Gallery Collection (UK)                

    The National Gallery Collection contains over 2,300 works, including many famous works, such as van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait, Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus, Turner’s Fighting Temeraire and Van Gogh’s Sunflowers.

  • National Gallery of Art Collections (USA)                

    From Byzantine altarpieces to pop art, learn all about paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, photographs, and other works in the collection.  Browse the collection and make connections among objects you know and newly discovered masterpieces.

  • National Gallery of Art Images (USA) Open Access Collection                

    NGA Images is a repository of digital images of the collections of the National Gallery of Art. On this website you can search, browse, share, and download images.

  • National Media Museum                

    The National Media Museum is home to over 3.5 million items of historical and cultural significance, and our diverse Collection encompasses some of the finest and most compelling visual material to be found anywhere in the world.

  • National Portrait Gallery                

    Search more than 15,000 records from the collections of the National Portrait Gallery. NPG's collections of paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, and photographs document the diversity of individuals who have made significant contributions to the history and culture of the United States.

  • National Portrait Gallery, London                

    Explore over 200,000 portraits from the 16th Century to the present day in a wide variety of different mediums.

  • SFMOMA                

    We are committed to exploring the new, the challenging, and the unexpected. From our internationally recognized and rapidly growing collection of more than thirty thousand artworks to our innovative film and performance programs, SFMOMA has continuously advanced the interpretation, presentation, and preservation of modern and contemporary art — embracing its connection to the world around us.

  • SIRIS Image Gallery                

    The SIRIS Image Gallery contains a sampling of visual records that are part of the Collections Search Center. The Image Gallery includes over 530,000 electronic images from several archival repositories and museums at the Smithsonian.

  • Smithsonian American Art Museum                

    The Smithsonian American Art Museum, the nation’s first collection of American art and one of the world’s largest and most inclusive collections of art made in the United States, is an unparalleled record of the American experience.

  • State Hermitage Museum                

    The collection of the State Hermitage includes over 3 million works of art and world culture artefacts. It contains paintings, graphic works, sculptures, works of applied art, archaeological artefacts and numismatic objects.

  • The Cloisters                

    The Cloisters museum and gardens, which opened to the public in 1938, is the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe.

  • Ad*Access Project                

    Over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955.

  • Galaxy of Images                

    The thousands of images on this site represent only a small portion of the more than 1.5 million printed books and manuscripts in the collections of Smithsonian Institution Libraries.

  • Library of Congress - Prints and Photographs Online Catalog                

    The Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) contains catalog records and digital images representing a rich cross-section of still pictures held by the Prints & Photographs Division and, in some cases, other units of the Library of Congress.

  • Library of Congress American Memory Project                

    American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity.

  • Online Exhibitions at New York Public Library

    Since 1996, the Library has created websites inspired by some of the physical exhibitions presented at its research centers, as well as a number of web-only presentations based on its collections.                       

  • Perseus Digital Library                

    Since planning began in 1985, the Perseus Digital Library Project has explored what happens when libraries move online.

  • Pierpont Morgan Library - Corsair                

    Named after Pierpont Morgan's yacht, CORSAIR is a single database providing unified access to over 250,000 records for medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, rare and reference books, literary and historical manuscripts, music scores, ancient seals and tablets, drawings, prints, and other art objects.

  • Smithsonian Institution - Archives of American Art                

    With over 20 million items in its continually growing collections, the Archives is the world’s largest and most widely used resource dedicated to collecting and preserving the papers and primary records of the visual arts in America.

  • UW Libraries Digital Collections                

    This site features materials such as photographs, maps, newspapers, posters, reports and other media from the University of Washington Libraries, University of Washington Faculty and Departments, and organizations that have participated in partner projects with the UW Libraries. The collections emphasize rare and unique materials.

  • American Museum of Photography                

    A Museum Without Walls... For An Art Without Boundaries.

  • Artcyclopedia

    Art Museums Worldwide; museums with fine art collections and an online presence.   

  • Digital Scriptorium           

    The Digital Scriptorium is a growing image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that unites scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research.

  • La Fayette: Database of American Art                

    This bilingual online catalogue presents more than 1,700 works produced by United States artists before 1940 that entered the national collections of France. It includes works of art in all media except prints and photography.

  • Web Gallery of Art

    The Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum and searchable database of Western (European) fine arts of the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, and Impressionism periods (1000-1900), currently containing over 39.300 reproductions.