Research Guides: Art History: Search for Images (still + moving)

Finding art images

Best practices for finding images of works of art:

Use sources that provide reliable information about works of art, such as the databases listed below.
Use sources that provide good-quality images, such as the databases listed below.
These types of websites can provide reliable information and quality images
Use Google Images carefully. The information about works of art (e.g. titles, dates, creator names, etc.) is not always accurate. The image quality is often not good.
Print books in the library are often the best place to find an image of an art object. You can scan the image at a high resolution and be confident the identifying information is accurate.

Still Images

ARTstor This link opens in a new window
Note: ArtStor is now part of JSTOR. ArtStor users can still use their existing account on the JSTOR platform.
ARTstor contains images of art, architecture and archeology from a range of cultures and time periods, in European, American and Asian cultures.

Freely Available Image Resources

AP Images [via EBSCOhost] This link opens in a new window
- Associated Press digital photo archive. Photojournalistic.
- Largest bank of historical and recent photos.
- Good source for public art, runway fashion shows and designers, and 'news worthy' artists.
- Domestic and worldwide events in society, politics, culture and sports.

American Art in France : the La Fayette Online Catalogue
- Inventories over 1800 works produced between 1620 and 1940.
- Works by American artists and now kept in French public collections.
- Includes works of art of all media except prints and photography.
Art Project (by Google)
- Objects from museums around the world.
- Create personal collections and share works.
Closer to Van Eyck: Rediscovering the Ghent Altarpiece
- Thousands of high-resolution images of the Ghent Altarpiece.
- Results from Lasting Support, and Interdisciplinary Research Project to Assess the Structural Condition of the Ghent Altarpiece.
Frick Art Reference Library Photoarchive
Frick Digital Image Archive
- 15,000 works of art from Frick Art Reference Library
- Research documentation for 125,000 works of art

Index of Medieval Art (formerly Index of Christian Art) This link opens in a new window
The Index of Medieval Art includes images and descriptive data relating to works of art produced between early apostolic times and the sixteenth century. The collection now includes secular subjects as well as a growing number of subjects from medieval Jewish and Islamic culture.

The 70 Museums of Florence
- More than 1200 pictures & detailed descriptions.
Metropolitan Museum of Art (Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History)
- Authoritative website about the entire history of art.
- Includes images with descriptive information, essays, maps.
- Search by artist's last name or style/period of your work.
National Gallery of Art: NGA Images
- More than 20,000 open access digital images.
NYU Faculty Digital Archive
- Digital assets from faculty of all disciplines at New York University.
- Includes Ancient World Image Bank
World Images
- California State University IMAGE Project.
- Almost 75,000 images.
- Global in coverage.
- Includes all areas of visual imagery.
Yale-Van Rijn Archive of African Art
- Primarily sculpture, from antiquity to the mid-twentieth-century.
- Approximately 180,000 images of African art.
- Focus on Africa south of the Sahara, including works in collections and in situ to the present.
Yale Digital Commons
- Art, natural history, books, and maps, photos, audio, and video from Yale University's digital asset collections.

Moving Images

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) Streaming Service This link opens in a new window
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) Streaming Service provides full-length streaming videos for specific artists' work from the mid-1960s to the present.
Library Stack This link opens in a new window
Library Stack connects digital materials from art, design, theory and architecture to global library cataloging systems. The collection includes PDF zines made by curators; downloadable exhibitions curated by artists; experimental sound compositions; magazines about experimental sound art; fonts channeling cultural histories; and political artworks in the form of custom browser extensions.

Temple University

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