LibGuides: Art History and Architecture: Locating Images


Library Research Guides

Locating Images

ARTstor This link opens in a new window
The Artstor Digital Library provides over 1.6 million digital images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences with an accessible suite of software tools for teaching and research. You need to register (free for MHC community members) if you wish to download ArtStor images.
AP Newsroom This link opens in a new window
AP Newsroom contains breaking news, feature stories, photographs, graphics and audio clips produced by the AP’s network of award-winning journalists, who operate in more than 250 locations worldwide. Includes 170 years of news stories, 12 million historical and contemporary images and an extensive collection of audio clips.
Archivision Research Library This link opens in a new window
The Archivision Digital Research Library is currently comprised of nearly 100,000 images of architecture, archaeological sites, gardens, parks and works of art with broad appeal in humanities teaching.
Provides images on architecture, gardens, parks, landscapes, public art and design for educational & commercial use.Where possible, drawings & models are photographed from original and copyright-free sources.
LUNA Commons This link opens in a new window
LUNA Commons provides access to over 380,000 images that are housed in college, museum, and other cultural heritage image collections.
LUNA Commons includes the Archivision collection of images.

ArchiveGrid This link opens in a new window
ArchiveGrid includes over four million records describing archival materials, bringing together information about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more. With over 1,000 different archival institutions represented, ArchiveGrid helps researchers looking for primary source materials held in archives, libraries, museums and historical societies.

American Memory from the Library of Congress
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.
Digital Public Library of America
Search images contributed from a wide array of museums and libraries.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
Perry Castaneda Map Collection
University of Texas at Austin Library map collection. Provides access to 250,000 maps.
VADS
Visual art collections comprising over 100,000 images that are freely available and copyright cleared for use. UK based.

Five College Museum Image Collection
Searchable database of the art collections of the Five Colleges and Historic Deerfield, a consortium of museums in Western Massachusetts, which provides access to information and images of over 60,000 objects.

Museum websites are excellent sources for images. Search specific museum websites to locate collections for your project. You should also check Flickr and Artstor as many museums and cultural institutions are using these platforms to share images.

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum Digital Collection
Collection spans thirty years of historic and contemporary design.
George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film
The photography collection includes more than 400,000 photographs and negatives dating from the invention of photography to the present day. The collection embraces numerous landmark processes, objects of great rarity, and monuments of art history that trace the evolution of the medium as a technology, as a means of scientific and historical documentation, and as one of the most potent and accessible means of personal expression of the modern era.
Museum of Fine Arts Boston Image Collection
This image collection is primarily good for viewing and personal enjoyment.
National Gallery of Art Image Collection
Search images from the National Gallery of Art collection.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Image Collection
The Museum has implemented Open Access for Scholarly Content (OASC). Through OASC, artworks in the Collection section of the website which the Museum believes to be in the public domain and free of other known restrictions have been identified by an Open Access for Scholarly Content (OASC) Icon; images associated with these artworks can be downloaded for license- and cost-free scholarly and academic publication
The National Gallery London
The National Gallery houses the national collection of paintings in the Western European tradition from the 13th to the 19th centuries. View Images from the collection.
The Smithsonian Institution Collection Search
Search over 8.8 million catalog records of museum objects, and library & archives materials. More than 1,096,000 of these records contain online images, video and sound files, electronic journals and other online resources.

Artsy
partners with galleries and museums to create a freely available and searchable image database. Includes contemporary art images, historical art images available for download. Artsy does feature images of artwork that is available for sale.
Cities and Buildings Database
Through University of Washington Collection of digitized images of cities and buildings throughout the world. Search by country, city, style, architect, or date of construction. Many images are copyright controlled.
Flickr Commons
Public photo archive, images are free of copyright restrictions.
Getty Search Gateway
allows users to search Getty repositories, including library catalogs, collection inventories, and archival finding aids. Provides out of copyright images for download through the Open Content Program.
Society for Classical Studies Image Resource List

© Copyright
According to copyright.gov "Copyright, a form of intellectual property law, protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture."

How do I know if something is still under copyright? There is a chart for that, created by Cornell University.

Creative Commons
To learn more about Creative Commons licenses watch Creative Commons Kiwi by Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand.You might also explore the CC website, see who uses CC licenses, or try building your own Creative Commons license.