Guide to Online Image Resources: Art History Resources

Provided by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This is one of the top art history sites on the Internet. It includes a huge number of maps, timelines, thematic essays, and annotated images as well as artist and subject indexes. A must-see!

Provided by Khan Academy. This award-winning site contains hundreds of art history essays, videos, and images plus maps. One can browse by time period, region, style, artist, or theme. Artists and movements are grouped into time periods—for example, “1907-1960, Age of Global Conflict” is broken down into everything from Fauvism, Dadaism, and Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism, the New York School, and Mexican Modernism. Related sites are recommended as well. The themes menu links to a variety of pages, including “For the Very Beginner,” “Art & Context,” “Patronage and the Status of the Artist,” and pages addressing artmaking in various media.

Provided by the University of Michigan’s School of Art & Design. The section of this annotated links site most pertinent to art history is “Research Resources.” In addition to subsections focusing on various regions of the world, the subsection “Art History on the Web” links to a large number of general art history sites.

Authored by Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe of Sweet Briar College. The links pages on Witcombe's site are grouped by region of the world, time period, and genre of art. The “Art History Various & Miscellaneous” page contains extensive links to sites describing art movements and to topical sites such as the "Art and Architecture of Venice" and "World Heritage Cities of Spain." The “Miscellaneous for Art Historians” section provides links to a variety of sites such as "Cut and Paste: A History of Photomontage" and "Women Artists: Self-Portraits & Representations of Women From the Medieval Period to the Present." Witcombe's links pages are highly organized and detailed and are often recommended by art librarians.

Authored by Nicolas Pioch. Under “Famous Artworks,” this award-winning site includes numerous essays on European, American, and Japanese art by time period and style/movement. Many artist bios are included as well and are browsable under “Artist Index”; some are accompanied by images. A glossary covers art periods and other terms. Terms and names used in essays which have their own essays are linked to them. There are also special sections on Cezanne, the medieval work "Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry," and touring Paris.

Provided by the Art Story Foundation. This great site contains descriptions of modern artists and art movements/styles, a number of timelines, some unique and interesting image comparisons, and an introduction to modern art theory and the prominent critics who helped shape it.

Authored by Katherine Bolman. The main part of this site provides high school and college students with an introduction to prehistoric art (Australia, Africa, India, France, and Spain), art ca. 5,000 BCE (Japan, China, Turkey, Scotland, and North America), and art ca. 3,000 BCE (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus River Valley, and Malta). Bolman also includes materials for use by teachers.

This helpful online art dictionary includes over 3,600 terms which are searchable and browsable alphabetically. Some artwork images are embedded, while others are linked to on museum sites. If a term is used in a definition which itself is defined in the dictionary, a link is provided to that definition.

The timeline extends from 1830 to 2000 and shows the historical context of various works of art in the Phillips Collection.

This "Search Collection and Biographies" page enables one both to search the collection database and to search for artists' biographies, which are insightfully written and are accompanied by links to their artworks in the collection, blog posts discussing their art, etc.