Home > Image Databases > Art, Architecture, and Photography
Art Image Databases
- Art Explorer
- An interactive web site from the Art Institute of Chicago. The site currently includes impressionist and post-impressionist works. Users can create scrapbooks of the images, add annotations, save them, and publish them for others to see. The images may not be reproduced or republished without permission and/or licensing. Your use may however fall within the "fair use" provision of the United States copyright laws. Check under Terms and Conditions for more information.
- Art Images For College Teaching (AICT)
- "A personal, non-profit project of its author, art historian and visual resources curator Allan T. Kohl. 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. The images displayed on this site have been photographed on location by the author, who consents to their use in any application that is both educational and non-commercial in nature."
- Artcyclopedia
- Indexes artists found at museum sites, image archives, and other online resources. Highlights sites image use policies which will vary with each site.
- Arts And Humanities Data Service: Visual Arts
- Images in history, arts and crafts, textiles, and other subjects. Permission for reuse varies by collection.
- The Bridgeman Art Library archive
- "The Bridgeman Art Library is the world's leading source of fine art images."
- British Library Images Online
- "...instant access to thousands of images from the British Library's unparalleled collections. You can search, order, purchase and download images on these pages."
- Casselman Archive of Islamic and Mudejar Architecture in Spain
- Over four thousands color slides and black and white photographs documenting the architecture of Spain. Now housed at the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections. Can be searched by place, date, subject, or title.
- Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture
- The decorative arts and material culture get their full due at this lovely online collection created by the University of Wisconsin’s Digital Collections program. The Digital Collections program has digitized a variety of primary and secondary resources related to the decorative arts, with a particular focus on Early America. The materials offered here for consideration include items from the Chipstone ceramics and furniture collection and a number of important early documents, such as "The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director" from 1754 and Humphry Repton’s 1794 work, "Sketches and hints on landscape gardening".
- National Gallery Collections
- "The National Gallery Collection is comprised of high definition images from the National Gallery, London. Each entry includes a description of the work along with its artist, medium, dimensions, acquisition credit, and date made"
- National Portrait Gallery
- Contains more than 80,000 portraits and is continually being added to. Consult the Smithsonian's copyright page for information on use.
- Saskia Digital Image Archive
- 30,000 digital images of paintings, sculpture and architecture, from many important collections as well as archaeological sites. Images correlate to 19 major art history texts. This is a subscription database; you must have a College of DuPage Library card for off-campus access.
- Victoria & Albert Museum
- Over 24,000 images from the Victoria & Albert collections. Images include works of art, costume and textiles, and furniture. "Students and teachers in particular are encouraged to use images for their course work or private study. ... Any form of reproduction, in print, television, video, multimedia, website other electronic media, or any other form of dissemination for commercial or non-commercial use must be licensed by the Victoria and Albert Museum."
- Web Gallery Of Art
- Contains European painting and sculpture from 12th to mid-19th centuries. Use of the images is restricted to educational and personal purposes. "Distribution of the images in any form is prohibited without the authorization of their legal owner." The legal owner may or may not be the Web Gallery.
- WorldImages
- The WorldImages database contains almost 75,000 images from the California State University IMAGE Project. "Conditions of Use: You are free to use these images for non-profit educational purposes, but we ask that you give credit to the copyright holders who retain rights to the images. These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License."
Architecture Image Databases
- Great Buildings Online
- A large collection of commonly studied buildings. Includes photos, plans, 3-D walkthroughs, drawings. NOTE: The website has somewhat limited content. The Library has the full Great Buildings collection on CD in the Reference Area.
- ArtServe At Australian National University
- Over 19,000 images of architecture and architectural sculpture of the Mediterranean Basin, a small selection and brief survey of Islamic architecture, and a searchable book on Greek and Roman Cities of Western Turkey.
- Chicago Imagebase
- The Chicago Imagebase is a Web-based project aimed at enhancing knowledge about the built environment of the Chicago region. On this site you will find a wide variety of images and other data along with information on how to use this data to study the city.
- Cities And Buildings Image Database
- From the University of Washington Libraries. Contains nearly 10,00 images contributed from a wide range of sources and covering buildings worldwide. Images are copyrighted and may not be duplicated without permission, but "freely available to anyone with access to the Web for use in the classroom, student study, or for individual research purposes."
- The Kidder Smith Slide Archives On American Architecture
- Selection of images from the Kidder Smith Slide Archives, Rotch Visual Collections, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Current coverage of New England will continue to be expanded to include the entire U.S. Indexed by site name, architect and geographic location.
- Society Of Architectural Historians
- Images of American Architecture, grouped into five chronological periods, 1600 - 1976. Images of world architecture, ancient through modern.
- Structurae
- Structurae is an International Database and Gallery of Structures. It is provided as a free service to engineers, as well as teachers and students of structural engineering. This site contains contemporary and historical information on works of structural engineering and their designers, and firms that constructed them. The intention is to provide a broad overview of structures and as much technical information as reasonable." Also points to relevant print and web materials. Searchable; browsable by designer, geographic area, type of structure, firm, and project name.
Photography Image Databases
- The American Museum of Photography
- A collection of exhibits of American photographers and the history of American photography. Includes an Online Image Library. Check the copyright and use restrictions.
- George Eastman House: Photography Collection
- More than 400,000 photographs from the daguerreotype to modern photography. Reproduction fees are charged and if copyright permission is needed that must be obtained separately.
- Library Of Congress: Prints And Photographs Online Catalog
- About 1 million digital images from the Library's holdings. Many, but not all images are in the public domain. It is the users responsibility to make sure they are in compliance with copyright or other licensing restrictions. Coverage is broad: baseball cards, architecture, photography, the Middle East, and depression photos are just some of the subjects.
- Photomuse
- "George Eastman House and the International Center of Photography (ICP) collaborate in building Photomuse to provide online resources for the study of an important cultural subject: photography at work in the world. We invite all students and scholars -- be they academic or recreational -- to use this site and to assist us in making this a useful and authoritative learning tool."
- Smithsonian Photography Initiative
- Provides links to sites hosted by the Smithsonian Institution. Use restrictions are clearly laid out.
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