Art, Architecture and Design: Finding digital images

The ARTstor Digital Library is a nonprofit resource that provides over 2.4 million digital images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences with an accessible suite of software tools for teaching and research. Community-built collections comprise contributions from outstanding international museums, photographers, libraries, scholars, photo archives, and artists and artists' estates. Also provides access to Archivision Base Collection and Modules 1 - V, which includes images relating to architecture, urban design, archaeological sites, landscapes and gardens.

Prints, drawings, paintings, maps, bibliographies, letters, and photographs documenting the relationships among peoples in North America from 1534-1850. An advanced image search page is available via the "Images" link under "Find."

The foremost scholarly art encyclopedia, covering both Western and non-Western art. and a comprehensive online reference resource for all aspects of the visual arts worldwide from prehistory to the present day. Includes more than 7,000 searchable images from such organizations as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as 40,000 editorially selected image links to museums and galleries.

In JSTOR, you can search the captions of images within items in the database. To search for content with images use the “caption” option on the drop-down menu on the Advanced Search page.

This database represents the largest compilation ever created of biographical information on indigenous peoples from all areas of North America, including biographies, auto-biographies, personal narratives, speeches, diaries, letters, and oral histories. It includes over 119,000 pages of text and images. A link to images can be found under "Tables of Contents." Browse different types of images by clicking on the links at the top of the page.

The gateway to Oxford’s art reference works, including the Grove Dictionary of Art and the Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Includes over 19,000 images of works of art, structures, plans, and artist signatures.

Over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955.

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. It is a digital record of American history and creativity.

Special focus on the Islamic world, based at MIT, Archnet features a virtual library of digitized books, journals, reference tools, as well as thousands of images of architecture in the Islamic world.

Emphasizing ancient, medieval, and Renaissance European art and architecture, AICT is intended primarily to disseminate images of art and architectural works in the public domain on a free-access, free-use basis to all levels of the educational community, as well as to the public at large.

Includes thousands of the greatest images from the British Library's collections. The collection features historical texts, antiques, antique maps, furniture, architecture, anthropological artefacts, glass, ceramics, etc.

The Canadian Art Database is a project of the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art (CCCA). It consists of an ever-growing image/text database presenting information on Canadian artists and writers, and their work. It also includes an extensive directory of links to other Canadian art websites.

The Cities and Buildings Database is a collection of digitized images of buildings and cities drawn from across time and throughout the world, available to students, researchers and educators on the web.

A large collection of images with a wide range of search options. Image rights must be purchased for use other than viewing.

Millions of items from a range of Europe's leading galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Includes books and manuscripts, photos and paintings, television and film, sculpture and crafts, diaries and maps, sheet music and recordings.

Provides access to documents, including images, digitized by the Bibliothèque nationale de France and partner libraries.

A commercial image company providing photography, illustration, and film images. Collections within Getty Images include 425,000 Time & Life images as well as Lonely Planet, and National Geographic images. Image rights must be purchased for uses other than viewing.

Explores 230 collections from around the world with thousands of artworks photographed in extremely high resolution. Collections from Canadian institutions include the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada Council Art Bank, National Ballet of Canada, and Pointe-à-Callière, Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History.

Provides central search access to the thousands of images held on the websites of participating Canadian cultural institutions.

Over 2 million images extracted from public domain eBooks.

Includes many digitized image collections by topic (aboriginal peoples, politics and government, sports, war and military, art and photography, literature music etc.) Permission requirements vary by collection. Select "What We Have On Our Website."

The Library of Congress’ digital collections provides open access to full text historical documents and materials . Includes written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.

Millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today.

Represented in the permanent collection are works of art from classical antiquity and Ancient Egypt, paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met also maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanic, Byzantine, and Islamic art. The museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armor from around the world. Several notable interiors, ranging from 1st-century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Met's galleries.

The museum's collection offers an overview of modern and contemporary art, including works of architecture and design, drawings, painting, sculpture, photography, prints, illustrated books and artist's books, film, and electronic media.

The National Gallery houses the national collection of Western European painting from the 13th to the 19th centuries.

NGA Images is a repository of digital images of the collections of the National Gallery of Art. On this website you can search, browse, share, and download images. A standards-based reproduction guide and a help section provide advice for both novices and experts. More than 25,000 open access digital images up to 3000 pixels each are available free of charge for download and use. NGA Images is designed to facilitate learning, enrichment, enjoyment, and exploration.

The National Gallery of Canada is home to the most important collections of historical and contemporary Canadian art. The Gallery also maintains Canada's premier collection of European Art from the 14th to the 21st century, as well as important works of American, Asian and Indigenous Art and renowned international collections of prints, drawings and photographs.

The Gallery acquires portraits from the life in all media, whether by purchase, bequest or gift, of the most eminent persons in British history from the earliest times to the present day. Since 1980 the Gallery has also commissioned portraits.

NYPL Digital Gallery provides free and open access to over 800,000 images digitized from the New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more.

Search over 16 million catalog records with 5.1 million images, video and sound files, electronic journals and other resources from the Smithsonian's museums, archives & libraries.

The VADS image collection provides over 100000 art and design images free for use in education, drawn from university and college art collections and museums.

Sponsored by the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), virtualmuseum.ca is an online resource for Canada's museums and their collections. Featuring over 600 virtual exhibits, nearly 1 million images, and a wealth of engaging multimedia content.

View maps, fine artwork, photographs and other items from over thirty renowned collections.

The Web Gallery of Art is a searchable database of European fine arts and architecture (3rd-19th centuries), currently containing over 49.500 reproductions. Artist biographies, commentaries, guided tours, period music, catalogue, free postcard and mobile services are provided.

Virtual art encyclopedia.

Searches the images available in the Wikipedia encyclopedia.

A digital collection of works of art by contemporary Canadian women artists. Includes brief biographical and exhibit information.

Provides access to the California State University IMAGE Project. Contains approximately 100,000 images, is global in coverage and includes all areas of visual imagery.

A search engine for high quality Flickr images that answers queries based on what is inside the images – at the pixel level.

The “search tools” feature allows you to limit by size, color, type (including face, photo, clip art, line drawings, animated) and other parameters.

Photograph collections with "no known copyright restrictions" made available by the public photography archives of cultural institutions (including Canadian) and hosted by Flickr.

A curated bibliography of quality digital image collections spanning 85 subjects, including 950 digital collections. Compiled by the Image Resources Interest Group of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)

The Commons on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/commons
Publicly held photography collections with no known copyright restrictions made available by various cultural institutions including the Library of Congress, Smithsonian Institution, George Eastman House, McCord Museum.