LibGuides: Art : Find Images

General Art & Design

ARTstor
Repository of nearly 2 million digital images and media.

Art Images for College Teaching
Public domain images for college-level art history instruction.
VADS
Over 140,000 images from visual arts collections at UK institutions. Includes applied arts, architecture, design, fashion, fine art, and media.
Web Gallery of Art
A "virtual museum" of European painting and sculpture, with a focus on the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque periods. Although the site looks outdated, it is still updated regularly.
New York Public Library's Arts and Literatures Digital Gallery
Images of art and cultural objects from the New York Public Library, including dance, design, furniture, motion pictures, music, ornament, performance, spectacle, and theatre.

Art Museum Collections

Google Arts & Culture
Dynamically explore the world of art through various presentational tools. Includes objects from many major museums.
British Museum, London
Features digital images of objects from the huge range of periods and cultures represented in the British Museum.
Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Contains images of many of the artworks held and displayed by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California.
Guggenheim Museum, New York
This online collection contains selected classic works and more recent acquisitions from the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Provides access to images held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, including highlights from each of the curatorial departments as well as the entire Department of European Paintings and the entire Department of American Painting and Sculpture.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Contains images of objects from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.
Museum of Modern Art, New York
The online collection of the Museum of Modern Art includes artists and objects from the departments of Architecture and Design, Drawings, Painting and Sculpture, Prints and Illustrated Books, and Film and Media.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Contains text and/or data on all of the objects in the National Gallery's collection, and images of more than 5600 objects.
Smithsonian Institution
Over 7 million images from the Smithsonian's array of museums. Many images are licensed as CC0 (public domain).
Tate Collection, Britain
An online database of works in the Tate Collection, plus an illustrated glossary.
Yale University Art Gallery
Works from the Gallery, including paintings, decorative arts, arms and armor, and more. Searchable by department, classification, artist, etc.

Art & Design Special Topics

accessCeramics
A juried collection of contemporary ceramics that was compiled by faculty and staff at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon.
Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, British Library
Medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts in the British Library, London.
Getty Research Institute Special Collections
Special Collections in the Getty Research Library, including the art of David Tudor, designs by El Lissitzky, and prints after Poussin.
IDP International Dunhuang Project
More than 100,000 manuscripts, paintings and artifacts from Dunhaung and other Silk Road sites of the first millennium AD.

What can I use these images for?

Every database is different! Check each database's license terms if you are unsure if you can use an image.

Typically, images from databases can be used for:

Student papers
Student presentations or multimedia projects
Faculty classroom presentations

Often (but not always), images cannot be used for:

Commercial or for-profit products or projects
Faculty publications
Print brochures for public distribution