LibGuides: Visual Resources Collection, Fine Arts Library: More Art Image Sites

Selected List of Art Image Sites

It is good practice to go to the websites of individual museums to find out their policies on downloading images for educational purposes. This is continuously changing, the general trend being towards greater open access by the museums of their images for educational purposes when copyright is not an issue. In fact, many of the museums have placed their public domain images on Flickr and invite additional information about the images by the public.

Emphasis has been placed on sites that are open access for research and educational use. These sites are indicated by the "open lock" symbol.

FOR PHOTOGRAPHY

Flickr The Commons Searches the photo collections of over 112 institutions, such as the Smithsonian, Brooklyn Museum, and Getty Research Institute who offer images with no known copyright restrictions on the content they share.
Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog More than 1.2 million items available. Many images have larger sizes for display or download. Images, primarily American, include photographs, prints and drawings, posters and architecture and engineering drawings, many in the public domain
New York Public Library Digital Collections Free and open access to over 800,000 images from their Collections of illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, posters, print photographs and more. Also of note are the of note in the New York Public Library Digital Gallery Arts & Literature Collections: Africana & Black History, Dance in Photographs and Prints, and the Vandamm archive featuring "theatrical personalities and production" from the 1920s-1957.

FOR AFRICAN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN ART:

New York Public Library Digital Collections 9,000+ African and African American free and open access images from the Library's Collections
HEIR, the Historic Environment Image Resource Grew out of University of Oxford's lantern and glass slide collection from the 1890s to 1950. Brings together scholars, software developers and a world-wide community of 'citizen scientists' to keyword and identify old photos of monuments, landscapes and environments taken across the world and to re-photograph their modern settings so the results of changes and the implications of these changes can be studied. Many images of archaeological sites included. For educational purposes only.
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Contributors include the University of Oxford, the Ashmolean Museum, Historic England, the British Museum and Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries.
Smithsonian National Museum of African Art African arts and culture across the world, both tradition and modern and contemporary
Stanford University Libraries African Collections Publications, audio-visual materials, archives, manuscripts and electronic resources about and from Sub-Saharan Africa.

FOR ASIAN ART:

Freer/Sackler: The Smithsonian Museums of Asian Art he Smithsonian Insitution's Museum of Asian art. In 2015 scans of their entire collection of 40,000 art works were released online, more than 90% in high resolution, and with no copyright restrictions for non-commercial use.

FOR EUROPEAN ART

Art Images for College Teaching "Emphasis on ancient, medieval, and Renaissance European art and architecture". Copyrighted intellectual property of art historian and photographer Allan T. Kohl (unless otherwise credited) and are licensed for non-profit use. Two different image sizes are available for download.
Europeana Collections Millions of items with metadata in multiple languages from a growing number of Cultural institutions in Europe such as the British Library, the Louvre and the Rijksmuseum. Search results are grouped by Text, Image, Video, and Sound. Refining of search is more powerful once initial search terms are entered. Site takes you back to original site of object. Browse by timeline also featured. Translation tool. And over 20 million items on site cleared for Open Access.
Rijks Studio The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam launched Rijks Studio, an online presentation of almost 600,000 works from the Museum’s Collection. Viewers are allowed to freely download any of these images in high resolution format,copyright free, to create new images. Over 300,000 of these "new" images are on display on the site as well.
Web Gallery of Art Database of European fine arts and architecture (8th-19th centuries), currently containing over 42.400 reproductions. Artist biographies, commentaries, guided tours, period music, free postcard and mobile services are provided.

FOR ISLAMIC ART

Aga Kahn Visual Archive (AKVA) Growing Collection of digitized slides and born-digital images of Islamic architecture, urbanism, and the built environment, as well as plans and drawings, all available for educational use.
Archnet Largest online source of International architecture, urban design, landscape design, with special focus on the Islamic arts in Asia and Africa. More recently broadening focus to include architecture that either influenced or was influenced by Islamic architecture. Aga Khan Visual Archive is included in this database. Downloading is open for educational purposes.

FOR MANUSCRIPTS:

Gallica This link opens in a new window Dates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. An online multimedia library from the Bibliothèque Nationale of France. Covers the 16th - 21st centuries as well as providing texts, images, animation, and sound files related to the French experience of the 19th century.
An English language overview is available.

British Library Catalog of Illuminated Manuscripts Images of Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in the British Library. Full digital coverage of selected manuscripts; catalog descriptions of others.

FOR CARTOONS (HUMOROUS IMAGES)

Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum Images of American printed cartoons – editorials, comic strips, comic books graphic novels sports and magazine cartoons.
British Cartoon Archive Holds over 200,000 comic strips, newspaper clippings, books and magazines representing the history of British cartooning over the last 200 years. Archive part of the Templeman Library at the University of Kent.
Duggoons Australian artist Peter Duggan has created this site with cartoons having to do with the world of art. He first creates them for the London newspaper, The Guardian.

FOR STREET ART

Brooklyn Street Art Graffiti, urban art, public art, street art found in the streets and studios of New York City and other sites around the world. Images found on the site may be used, if cited, for educational use.

USEFUL FOR ALL PERIODS OF ART

Artcyclopedia Search by artist, title of artwork, or museum. Results link directly to works of art in museums and other collections. Browse by art movements, medium, subject and nationality and be given names of artists associated with these movements, subjects, etc.
Art Institute of Chicago Offers unrestricted access to 44,000+ images from its digital archive made available under Creative Commons license.
Flickr The Commons Not just personal collections of pictures on this site. Has expanded after a joint venture between Flickr and the Library of Congress. Purpose is to increase access to publicly held image collections. Includes images with no known copyright restrictions which you can find by using Advance Search. Growing number of collections like the Library of Congress, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Britsh Library, etc. are placing their material on this site. You can also help tag these images.
Free Images for Academic/Scholarly Use Not only does this link give you a list of "free" image banks" in the U.S. and abroad, but it also talks a bit about rights clearance for images
Getty Open Content Program Over 100,000 high resolution, open source images from the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute of images for which these institutions own the rights or which are deemed to be in the Public Domain. Can be downloaded for free and without restrictions. Minimum resolution of 300dpi. Bibliographic record included.
Google Arts & Culture Images from over 1,200 leading museums and archives across 70 countries who have teamed with the Google Cultural Institute. Huge site with many ways to search. Website and app vary in strengths. Can use Google Cardboard viewers to take virtual tours of sites.
Metropolitan Museum of Art From their Collections, over 400,000 high resolution images of public domain works that can be downloaded, shared and remixed without restriction
TinEye TinEye is a reverse search engine that searches over 1.5 billion images. When you upload an image TinEye will provide information on other versions of that image that are available and the source of the image.
Wikimedia Commons All media repository. Unlike its partner, Wikipedia, images included here are in the public domain and freely licensed for educational use. Museums such as the Walters Art Museum, the British Museum and other museums are placing their copyright –free images on this site also.

COMMERCIAL SOURCES - IMAGES FOR PURCHASE

Bridgeman Over 400,000 high quality images available for purchase from some 8,000 collections and 29,000 artists from museums, galleries, historical societies and artists around the world. Prehistoric to contemporary. Will also address copyright and licensing issues.
Getty Images Stock photo company with millions of still images, videos, music and multimedia items in their collection.
The Lively Morgue An incredible resource. Website of the picture library of The New York Times – huge number of prints and negatives, most of which are not yet digitized, but some of which are uploaded each week and available for purchase.
Scholars Resource Image collections from various commercial image banks such as Saskia, Davis, Hartill, Archivision and Bridgeman. Every period of art. All images copyrighted; access by license agreement.