Research Guides: Art History Research Resources: Finding Images & Websites

Image Databases & Using Images Appropriately

Use the image databases below to find images for research or for use in your papers and presentations. Search by artist, time period, or topic. The mobile version of ARTstor (available for iPhone or Android) allows you to access your saved images as flashcards so that you can study for slide/visual exams.

For information on using images appropriately and within copyright or fair use guidelines, please see the 2015 Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts from the College Arts Association.

ARTstor
*You will need to create an account to view the full collection and download content. See this page for information: https://artstor.libguides.com/students* The ARTstor Digital Library provides images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences, with an accessible suite of software tools for teaching and research. Comprises contributions from outstanding international museums, photographers, libraries, photo archives, and artists and artists' estates. Images form ARTstor are for noncommercial educational or scholarly use only. Images may be used in educational or scholarly presentations, including printed handouts, but may not be otherwise distributed or publicly displayed.
Getty Open Content
Hosted by the Getty Research Institute. Search across several of the Getty repositories, including collections databases, library catalogs, collection inventories, and archival finding aids. This link initially limits your search to images available for free download under the Getty's Open Content Program.

Art Museum Websites

Museum websites are an excellent source of reliable information on the artistic works in their collections. Many museums create extensive online versions of physical exhibitions, both for the items in their permanent collections and for temporary special exhibitions. These online exhibitions can include supplemental resources such as topical research essays, videos, podcasts of lectures, and high-quality digital images.

Ackland Art Museum
Art museum at The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Art Institute of Chicago
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Louvre
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art Publications
See the full-text of hundreds of exhibition catalogs, books, and journal articles from the Met.
Mint Museum-Charlotte
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
National Gallery-London
National Gallery of Art-Washington, D.C.
Norman Rockwell Museum: Research & Illustration History
Reynolda House Museum of American Art
Located in Reynolda Village, admission is free for Wake Forest University students, faculty, and staff.
Tate Gallery
Uffizi Gallery
Vatican Museums
Includes the Sistine Chapel.
Wake Forest University Visual Resources
Includes images of artistic works purchased by Wake Forest University or housed in University collections.
Weatherspoon Art Museum
Art museum at The University of North Carolina-Greensboro.

Art History Websites

Other websites can be good resources as well. Some examples include:

university or faculty sponsored sites
academic or open-access journals
scholarly or historical societies and conference proceedings
companions to television productions or other media events
national archives

the-artists.org
Biographical entries for modern and contemporary artists of a variety of disciplines.
Architecture Week
Archives of American Art
Part of the Smithsonian Institution.
art21
Companion website to the PBS series "Art in the Twenty-First Century." Includes videos, interviews, and artist biographies. The original series can be streamed here: http://media.nclive.org/browse_videos.phtml?Series=10
artdaily.org
Daily art newspaper covering contemporary art.
Art History Resources
Annotated database of links dealing with art history, from prehistoric art to the present. Edited by Dr. Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe at Sweet Briar College.
ArtLex
Online dictionary of art terminology. Includes a pronunciation guide.
Duchamp Research Portal
On online Marcel Duchamp archive, combining the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Centre Pompidou, and Association Marcel Duchamp.
Europeana
Portal to hundreds of cultural and historical collections from across Europe. Includes images, texts, sounds, and videos.
Frederick Law Olmstead Collection-Library of Congress
Collection of journals, letters, designs, and much more by influential landscape architect and designer Frederick Law Olmstead.
Great Buildings Collection
Images, architectural drawings, commentaries, bibliographies, and 3-D models of one thousand significant buildings in world architecture.
Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art
Peer-reviewed online scholarly journal, focusing on the Netherlands during the early modern period (c.1400-c.1750).
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress has many focused collections, such as the American Memory Project and the American Folklife Center, which include audio, video, photography, prints, historic newspapers and other text collections, and maps. Not all collections are limited to American history and culture, so explore!
Medici-Godfathers of the Renaissance
Companion website to the PBS series, "Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance."
Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture
Peer-reviewed online scholarly journal, focusing on the the artistic creations of artists worldwide during the long nineteenth-century.
Olmstead Online
Interactive map of locations where Frederick Law Olmstead and his architectural company created neighborhoods, campuses, gardens, buildings, and cities. Depending on the site, plans, images, and other documents may be included.
Shorpy Photo Blog
High-definition photographs from c.1850-c.1950. Browsable by location, photographer, and content.
Smithsonian Institution
Link is to the search page for the collections of the Smithsonian Institution. Includes images, video, audio, online journals, and other texts.
The Sogdians: Influencers on the Silk Roads
Online exhibition from the Freer & Sackler Galleries on the culture of the Sogdians, a trading culture.
Visual Culture & Gender
Peer-reviewed online scholarly journal concerned with how visual culture impacts the development of gender.
Voice of the Shuttle
Annotated database of web resources on all disciplines of the humanities. Edited by Alan Liu, at the Department of English at The University of California-Santa Barbara.