LibGuides: Guide to Online Image Resources: General and Topical Collections

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Image Databases Subscribed to by KCAI

ARTstor is a repository of more than one million images specific to art and design fields from a wide range of cultures and time periods.

General Online Image Collections

Many of the sites listed under the "Art History Resources" tab are also great sources of images. Please consult the "Copyright for Artists" tab regarding copyright issues.

Internet Archive Book Images
The Internet Archive has partnered with Flickr to display all images from their books scanned in separate image searches.
The Flickr site allows you to then look at all the images in that one book (where the one image was found) or read the text of that book.
New York Public Library Digital Gallery
The NYPL Digital Gallery provides access to a vast array of digitized images from its world-class research collections. Visual art images include medieval illuminated manuscripts, illustrated manuscripts from China, Japan, Russia, and the Hebrew tradition, William Blake’s illustrated books, African and African American art, Japanese calligraphy and paintings, wood engravings, drawings, etchings, lithographs, prints, posters, postcards, song sheet covers, images from books on the decorative arts, photographs from all over the world, and more.
Europeana
This is a portal to a huge set of European online cultural collections. The general search box can be used to search for creators of works, titles of works, dates or time periods, etc. One can also browse by source institution.
Getty Images
Millions of images, free to share.
Google Art Project
Google Art Project is another portal to a huge number of online collections. Note: In order to use this site, click on the link provided on the opening page to download Google’s Chrome Frame (a rather large program). Some of the participating institutions provide access to their collections on their own websites as well. However, here one can search across all the collections simultaneously for a given artist’s works—very cool!
WorldImages
Hosted by San Jose State University. WorldImages provides access to the California State University IMAGE Project and contains about 80,000 images. One can browse through major categories ("portfolios") or through a list of detailed categories via the portfolio list.
Web Gallery of Art
Curated by Emil Krén and Daniel Marx. Description on site: “The Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture of the Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassicism, Romanticism periods (1000-1850), currently containing over 29.000 reproductions. Picture commentaries, artist biographies are available. Guided tours, period music, catalogue, free postcard and other services are provided.” This extensive collection is searchable/browsable by artist, time period, art form, etc. A glossary is included as well as “guided tours” of the collection by theme.
Geocoded Art
This is quite a unique site. The author uses Google Maps to pinpoint the locations where the included landscape paintings were painted. One can search by artist or painting name or browse by region. The author states that all paintings are in the public domain.

Topical Image Collections

Casselman Archive of Islamic and Mudejar Architecture in Spain
Hosted by the University of Wisconsin Digital Archive. Description on site: “This collection contains over four thousand color slides and black and white photographs of medieval Spain taken by the late Eugene Casselman (1912-1996) during his thirty years of travel throughout the Iberian peninsula. The images span over one thousand years of architectural history, from the seventh to the seventeenth century."
Arts of China Consortium
Hosted by the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. The “Image Archives” section of the links page provides many links to online image collections of Chinese art.
Online Museum Resources for Asian Art
Provided by Columbia University. This extensive site covers East and Southeast Asia, India, Tibet, the Silk Road, Asian religions, clothing and fashion, women, Asians in the Americas, etc. One can browse by art medium, time period, or region. A links page provides links to other online Asian art collections.

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Guide to Online Image Resources: General and Topical Collections

Search the Catalog

Image Databases Subscribed to by KCAI

General Online Image Collections

Topical Image Collections

Subject Guide

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